


BREAKWATER

by eusuchia



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Culture, Anti-imperialism in space, Canon Divergence, Less fictional philosophy, M/M, M/M means martyr/martyr, Narn dialectics, References to addiction/drug use, Slow Burn, comrades to lovers, fictional religion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2020-04-06 10:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 58,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19061014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eusuchia/pseuds/eusuchia
Summary: An AU in which Stephen resigns from Earthforce after the Minbari War and is an active Narn sympathizer during the events of B5. Also an AU where people occasionally listen to G'Kar. A lot of Atlassian world-shouldering burdens and the resulting grief. A lot of Narn Stuff. A lot of talking and mutual caretaking. (They also kiss eventually)





	1. THINGS INDIFFERENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen is called in to help the Narns. Later, he offers his help to one in particular.

When the first Narn-Centauri War ended, Stephen was still a child. He didn’t remember the announcements on the news, couldn’t recall his parents discussing the topic over the dinner table. In school, the conflict was taught with the same academic indifference as most galactic politics that didn’t involve Earth Alliance. It was taught as a matter of industry that became a matter of hatred: a protracted, brutal affair that followed no rules of war. The Narn were strong, his teachers always seemed to say, both in will and in body. Stubborn and strong and united in their common cause. They resisted. They fought. They won. It was presented as a matter of course - a rather satisfactory denouement wherein the oppressed threw off their chains.

The second Narn-Centauri War began three weeks ago. He was there. But already, he found himself thinking, how could they fight back now? How could they ever win? There was no war of attrition to be protracted. Their strongholds were being quickly whittled down to one. All over the galaxy they were being hunted down and executed. It could hardly even be called war.

Stephen had few contacts, and he felt himself wearing out his welcome with those remaining. Being independent from Earthforce made it easier with some, and much harder with others - very little funding backed his name, and he was left to make desperate appeals to pathos. He pushed for diversions of medical supplies, tried to reach the few smugglers willing to ferry injured Narns to the station. Finding sympathizers was easy, but finding people with both the means and the will to help was more grueling and thankless than any work he’d ever done - the real medical work was almost a relief by comparison.

Almost every species had medical personnel aboard to handle anything too specialized for the Human staff in MedLab, but there were no Narn doctors in the quadrant. The few with enough expertise to qualify as more than combat medics worked mostly on the Narn Homeworld or on the largest battle cruisers. It was the same story with Narn’s best technical minds, in such short supply after Narn educational institutes took a century-long hiatus. Stephen and a handful of his staff were as close to Narn medical experts as it got for many lightyears - Ambassador G’Kar had said so himself upon a visit.

While Stephen cherished the honor, he regretted just how much research experience he was gaining. He had spent a few sleepless nights poring over manuals by Centauri pain technicians, published ‘for posterity’ on cross-species research channels. They were outdone only in their horrific coldness by their immaculate recording, a thorough and invaluable resource to anyone with Narn patients. He wondered lately if Narn doctors ever referred to those documents, or if their technical value could never be worth their cost.

Narns made good patients, on the whole - hardy and uncomplaining. They were unembarrassed and unsentimental about their biology, unlike a few more bashful species, and had a tendency to deference where healers were concerned. Their stoicism sometimes betrayed them, however, and Stephen had to remind his staff not to take a Narn’s self-report at face value, especially where pain was concerned.

He and a tireless crew - some staff, precious few volunteers - had been running MedLab as well as the clinic in Downbelow at full capacity with no reprieve, and still the ones they saved seemed so few. The death toll outside climbed staggeringly fast, each new day updating an estimate that bled zeroes into incomprehensibility. It seemed so futile, to send a handful back into the fray when their fleets were being swatted out of the sky like flies, their colonies vaporized. He tried to keep up to date, but every new story on the ticker seemed to score another tally in favour of the Centauri.

Stephen tried not to think too much about the emotional toll on his patients - the physical was his domain, and offered more than enough to occupy his attention. But it was hard not to wonder what they murmured to each other in the darkness of the sickbays, in confidence or in prayer. It was hard not to picture the impossibility of their grief, despite knowing it did nothing for either of them.

He saw a little of G’Kar here and there, but mostly Na’Toth corresponded for him, arranging meetings with survivors from the front lines. It was clear G’Kar was dutifully collecting intel for the Kha’Ri where he could. But most of Stephen’s patients had little information to offer, and G’Kar would simply sit at their bedsides - praying, offering what comfort he could, and, more often than Stephen liked, performing something like the last rites. He listened in when he had the chance, finding some grim comfort in the rhythm of G’Kar’s voice, the humming recitation smooth and familiar even as it carried the weight of death, imminent death.

In moments like those, G’Kar reminded him of the Foundationist ministers he used to know. When he was young, they seemed to hold all the knowledge of the universe, applying it deftly even to the smallest moments of mundane life. Passages learned by rote seemed like music in their mouths when the words felt hollow in his own. G’Kar sang to his fellows with the same steady confidence, a low tune that seemed to say, _rest. Your work is done._

Stephen couldn’t help but wonder who would say the same to G’Kar, when the time came. Would he accept it as easily as he delivered it?

—

The Captain’s office on Babylon 5 was, currently, more or less exactly as it had been when the station was built. It was painted in military-amenable drab colours and decorated sparsely with inoffensive plants, matched only in its excessive size by its intense blandness. Stephen found it fitting, in a way, reflective of his opinion of the position it housed.

Sheridan had called on him for a meeting in his lunch hour, and Stephen didn’t much miss the meal. He’d never had much of an appetite when he was busy, and these last few weeks he was very busy. Maybe it had started to show, because when he walked into his office, Sheridan looked up from his terminal and eyed him skeptically.

“Are you feeling alright, doctor?”

“Fine, Captain. Lots going on.” He’d had four hours of sleep in the last two days, a judicious use of stims the only thing keeping him on his feet. Details better kept to oneself.

“Fair enough,” Sheridan nodded. “You can probably guess what this is about. I just got off the horn with Earth Alliance and they’ve decided not to intervene in the Narn situation.”

Stephen sighed, looking at his shoes in a brief nod. _Don’t call it that_ , he thought. “Unsurprising,” he said.

“Unfortunately, yes. But we need to give G’Kar something or I have a feeling the Narns are going to start tearing the station apart. You have more… expertise in this area than anyone in C&C.”

“What area would that be?” Stephen asked flatly, his hands laced in front of him.

“Getting supplies in and out of places they shouldn’t be. People too. We need to redouble our efforts because no official help is coming.”

“Captain, this isn’t a few runaways from Psi Corps. There are thousands of Narns on dozens of ships out there.”

“I know,” Sheridan sighed. He stood up and met Stephen on the other side of his desk, leaning back against its surface. “But this is the scale we have to work on. EarthForce won’t come in on their side, the Minbari probably won’t either, and I don’t exactly blame them.”

“Why?”

“Don’t give me that. You know why. When it’s not outright war, it’s optics. We’re allied with the Centauri, and the Narns aren’t good for PR.”

“I thought people liked an underdog.”

Sheridan scoffed. “I doubt they want anybody to see them that way. They’ve burned themselves up trying to rebuild, thumping their chests for the last decade, skirmishing on outposts along the border-”

“ _Their_ outposts,” Stephen snapped, before he could think better of it. “You didn’t call it chest-thumping when Earthforce reclaimed colonies the Minbari destroyed, and if you t-”

“Dammit, Franklin! This is not about your bleeding heart!”

Even with a scant two years of age on him, every CO ended up reminding him of his father eventually, Stephen thought, grinding his teeth.

“I hope I don’t have to remind you that the last time you made a show of your politics, the only thing that got between you and a dishonorable discharge was that name you carry around after your rank.”

Stephen could have chewed a hole in his tongue, he bit it so hard. No mention of the fact that he resigned his commission the day after the war ended. No need, after his father’s recent visit. He had reminded everyone of it well enough. “Yessir,” he said.

Sheridan sighed and raised his hands in an appeasing gesture, knowing he pushed it too far. “Look, all I’m saying is be careful. You can have your sympathies - I have them too. I know that clinic you’re running Downbelow is seeing plenty of Narn traffic off the books. I’m trying to tell you we’re on the same side here. I’m telling you to keep it up.”

“Respectfully, sir,” he said flatly, “You’re telling me to make do.”

Sheridan stiffened, his back ramrod straight. “Yes, I am. That’s all we’ve got right now, making do. Now, I’m about to call in Ambassador Delenn and see about using the Minbari as cover for supply drops within Narn territory. I figure they can take as many as they can fit on the return trip here, or Sol Sector.”

“The Minbari-!” he choked. “They could end this whole thing in a day without breaking a sweat. The Centauri wouldn’t dare-”

“Doctor,” Sheridan said in a warning tone. “You know it doesn’t work that way. Ambassador Delenn says she’s doing what she can, and I believe that. I thought… god, Stephen, I thought you’d be happy that we’re working on something here. I thought you’d want to be part of it.”

“Is that why you called me in here? So I could pat your back and ease your conscience?”

Sheridan’s lips pressed into a line, and Stephen could all but see the vein throbbing in his temple. “Don’t be childish. We’re both trying to do the right thing. So you were too good for service - is it helping you now, all that righteousness?”

“Is it helping you, wearing that uniform?”

“Yes,” Sheridan said bluntly. “It helps me remember I’m not the type to turn my back when the going gets tough.”

Stephen bit back a bitter laugh. “You’re not the first person to call me a deserter. _Sir_.”

“That is not what I said. And for God’s sake, I am not here to argue with you about the Force!”

“But that’s exactly what it’s about, isn’t it? The chain of command.”

“And as a civilian, you’re just as powerless to it as I am.” Sheridan paced in front of his desk impatiently. “You grew up with the Force, you were even part of it. You know exactly how this works. You’re going to rake me over the coals for trying to make good in my position? You’re going to tell me I don’t care enough?”

“You care as much as Earthforce allows you to. You’ll play whatever hand they deal you.”

“Damned right I will! And I will play it well. If you want to turn this into an argument about moral superiority, I can’t stop you. But you will never argue me into some kind of remorse about being a loyal soldier for my- for our planet. So feel as enlightened as you want, doctor, and I’ll be here getting things done.”

Sheridan stood straight and stiff, everything about his posture square and tidy, a clear underline to his position. Franklin scowled, feeling his shoulders tighten just looking at him.

“The Narns are going to lose this war if nobody steps in. We both know it. You want to smuggle out a few civilians, fine. What happens when the Centauri take their homeworld and open season begins on every Narn in the galaxy, civilian or not? What happens when they get a taste for that expansionism they miss so much and start pushing into Drazi space? Are we going to take a side then?”

Sheridan’s jaw tensed, and he looked away - at some imaginary window that led nowhere but the blackness of space. “I’m not a fleet admiral, for god’s sake,” he answered after a moment, his voice tight like a drum. Stephen felt little for his discomfort. “I can’t make that decision, and neither can you, as much as we might want to. We both have to make do. Whatever comes into my jurisdiction, I will do anything in my power to help. You have to trust me on that.” The follow-up was unspoken, but there was a definite question in the look Sheridan was giving him. _Do you?_

Stephen shifted his weight uncomfortably between his feet. “I believe you can see the injustice. And that you want to fix it.”

Sheridan sighed. “I suppose that’s a start.” It wasn’t a good answer, that was true. But it wasn’t a good question to begin with. How could you trust someone who would let his conscience be overruled on the basis of a few stripes on an insignia? “We may not see eye-to-eye here but I need to know that we can work together.”

“We can work together. _Captain_ ,” Stephen added, doing his best to dull the edge on his voice. He knew there was no more to this conversation. He could question Sheridan’s conviction and be met with denial and hollow promise. He could demand an audience with Earthforce generals who would scoff at his name and decline the transmission on sight - who would hear out Old Firestorm’s disgraced son? It was pointless, every effort in every direction was so pointless. He swallowed the rest of the argument he wanted to have, even though he was angry, in a way he could only ever be angry on someone else’s behalf.

“I’ll get you some names. Beta Durani I, and a handful in Home Sector, though it’s getting harder to smuggle in and out of Sol. Anything else, Captain?”

They stared at each other levelly, knowing that neither had any solution to the other’s problems. “No, that’ll be all. Thank you.”

—

He was sure the news had made its way to G’Kar, but he hadn’t seen tail nor hide of the ambassador for three days. When he asked after him, Na’Toth’s expression flattened into diplomatic blankness and she said that he had been strained the last few days, and was resting. Stephen didn’t buy that for a second, but decided not to press the issue.

When he did finally see G’Kar, it was late - though recently, it seemed to always feel late. By the station chronometer it was nearly 2h00, and Stephen had sent most of his staff home. The few Narns hired on as orderlies were well suited to the night shift, their natural sleep cycle comprised of periodic naps throughout the day. Na’Kial and G’Ghaab were on duty, monitoring the patients in critical condition.

G’Kar walked through the doors of the Downbelow clinic with apparent familiarity, greeting Stephen across the room with both fists to his chest. Stephen returned a curt nod. G’Kar made his way to what constituted an ICU for the smuggled patients, tucked out of sight from the door lest any eager Centauri aboard hope to show initiative. The two Narn orderlies bowed deeply to him, and he returned their greetings stiffly.

Stephen’s most recent dose of stims had started to wear off, leaving him feeling like the edges of his mind were going blurry. He was exhausted, but not exhausted enough to miss the way G’Kar held himself more tensely than usual as he walked, the way he seated himself heavily by one of the comatose soldiers, grimacing as he bent.

Stephen approached quietly, pulling a chair over from a different bedside to sit near G’Kar. “Ambassador. His condition hasn’t changed, but Ka’Lyr’s improving,” he said, tilting his head to the sleeping patient sharing the small alcove. “We’ll probably discharge her day after next if nothing surprises us. She asked for you - I’ll tell her you came by.”

“I see. Her sister will be glad to hear. As for Rh’Gal,” he indicated the prone man in front of them, his chest rising and falling with unnatural steadiness. “I suppose we may only pray.” His voice was hoarse and weary. And though he was sure he had, Stephen couldn’t quite remember hearing it any other way.

He watched the ambassador close his left hand into a fist, pressing it first to his own chest, then the soldier’s. He had seen G’Kar carry this out several times in the past few weeks, and he gathered it was the prelude to shared prayer, a gesture of giving one’s strength to another. G’Kar shifted uncomfortably with the movement, avoiding strain on his back by leaning forward at an odd angle. “You’re hurt.”

G’Kar forced a smile as he withdrew his hand to his own chest again. “I’m quite alright, Dr. Franklin. Nothing I can’t take care of. But I appreciate your concern.”

“And I don’t appreciate being lied to. Just let me take a look.”

“Doctor,” G’Kar said, his voice drawn tight. “I assure you-”

“Come on, G’Kar, we’re alone -” G’Kar looked around meaningfully at the convalescing patients and the orderlies further down the room, who avoided eye contact. “More or less alone. These are your people. And mine are just as trustworthy.”

“I trust your people to treat my people, and while I am certain you do not do so for thanks, you have mine anyway.”

Stephen grunted, dissatisfied with the attempt at diversion. “Then let me do my job. Tell me what happened.”

G’Kar raised a hand to rub irritably at his temple. “I told you it’s nothing I can’t take care of. Please don’t make me say so again. Now, if you don’t mind…”

Short of surprising him with a sedative, Stephen couldn’t imagine forcing G’Kar to submit to an examination, much as he might want to. A sedative would need about thirty seconds to take effect anyway, and thirty seconds was more than G’Kar might need to decide he was not quite so thankful for the medical assistance.

Stephen sighed, relenting as G’Kar pointedly averted his gaze and bowed his head to pray over the man. _War scout Rh’Gal_ , he reminded himself as he stood to return to his office. _They have names_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a lot of Talking ahead. The longer this goes on the more canon divergent it will be, mostly in the sphere of G'Kar's philosophical and political trajectory. JMS fight me.
> 
> I feel obligated to give a nod to [kaelio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaelio), whose DS9 post-canon [political epic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16186019/chapters/37823240) strongly inspired me to tackle some of the things that interest (and... bother) me most about B5's setting!


	2. EMPTINESS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen makes a housecall.
> 
> || CW for mild medical grossness in this chapter by way of an infected wound + subsequent minor surgery.

**TO** : DIPLOMATIC ATTACHE NA’TOTH // GREEN 4-J  
**SUBJ** : [ ]

Saw G’Kar last night. Seemed hurt? I know you’re keeping an eye out. Let me know if he needs something.

Dr. Stephen Franklin  
Chief of Staff, Babylon 5 MedLab  
_This message and any attached documents are intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may be privileged or confidential. If you received this message in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and any attachments from your system._

—

Stephen was surprised to find Na’Toth making an in-person appearance mid-morning. He ate a late breakfast over a full spread of charts and half-finished reports, and was working on a mouthful of protein bar when she knocked on the desk to get his attention, the metal scales of her glove making a clattering sound. He gulped down his food awkwardly, setting the rest aside as she bowed quickly, one fist across her chest.

“Na’Toth. You got my message?” She nodded curtly. “How bad is it? What happened?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Stephen sighed. “Why not?”

Na’Toth glanced over their surroundings before stepping around his desk and circling to the side of his hearing ear. Stephen had noticed lately that most Narns were duly accommodating of his deafness, and supposed it was a logical side effect of a century of war that had left no shortage of injury and disability in its wake. She leaned in and spoke in an urgent whisper. “I’ve already betrayed his confidence coming to you for help. He can explain if it’s necessary. But you must see him… please,” she added, reluctantly.

“Can he wait until I’m off shift?”

“Yes. Of course. To avoid making a scene.”

“Making a _scene_? God, Na’Toth, if he needs help right now-” He stood from his chair, ready to head directly for the emergency kit by the door.

“No,” she insisted, putting a firm hand on his shoulder and pushing him back toward the desk. “No. Come after you are done here. He will not be happy with your visitation. Even less so if you have drawn attention to it.”

“I don’t give a damn what he’s happy with, if he’s- ow! Hey!” Na’Toth had clenched her grip - and released him the instant he protested. He rubbed at his shoulder, feeling for any tear in the fabric.

“Sorry. I forget how… vulnerable you are.” She glanced at her claws, then looked back at Stephen, who raised an eyebrow. “Oh. I… that wasn’t a threat. Well, not entirely. Not intentionally. All the same - I must insist you come after your shift. Please, Dr. Franklin,” she intoned, as though reading from a phrasebook. _Making Appeals to Humans: A Guide_. If Na’Toth was on par for her species, G’Kar was, by comparison, very diplomatic after all.

“Will you tell him I’m coming?”

“Absolutely not.”

“…Alright, what if he tries to throw me out?”

“He won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” She straightened up, her hands clasped behind her back and her chin tilted up. It was a gesture of promise, he was fairly sure. “Besides, he likes doctors.”

“He… does?” Stephen was caught a little off guard.

She tilted her head to look at him with amusement. “Most Narns do. We don’t have many, as you know. It’s something of a luxury to be attended to.”

“Right. Of course.” He scratched his head as he sat back down behind his desk. “I thought it was just a practical sentiment, not a matter of like or dislike. I’m pretty used to the opposite from most people. Most species. I don’t exactly blame them for being wary of an xenobiologist, though.”

She smiled wryly. “All thirty-eight members of the Kha’Ri residing on Homeworld are served by a single physician, and that is considered by some to be… exorbitant. I believe our Ambassador Mollari here has one entirely to himself.”

Stephen chuckled. “Dr. Ladorni? Mollari would be better off coming to me than that old fossil. But I take your point.”

“We are an appreciative people, doctor. To those who do appreciable things.” With that, a quick bow, and she turned to the door, leaving Stephen to speculate idly about the Kha’Ri’s physician as he went back to work.

—

Stephen made a beeline for Green 4 after his round of patient handovers at the end of the night. With as much discretion as he could, he left MedLab with one of the emergency kits. “House call,” he shrugged, to Nurse Espinoza, who shrugged back.

He pinged G’Kar’s door, and was greeted with a flippant, “Go away.”

Unsure if he should reveal himself immediately, he waited a moment. With his ear next to the door, he heard G’Kar complaining loudly in his native tongue, and Na’Toth replying with equal force, a muffled conversation of guttural consonants. The door opened. “Doctor,” Na’Toth smiled humourlessly. “Please come in.”

He stepped into dim redness. The last time he had been in this room was when he delivered Emperor Turhan’s untimely message, and he winced to think of how boldly he had walked through the space then.

“Dr. Franklin, I really must protest your intrusion,” G’Kar grunted from where he was seated at his desk. “I have told you-”

“I know. But I also know your condition hasn’t improved.” G’Kar was hunched in his chair, and as he was dressed only in a simple robe, Stephen spotted the brace that was strapped tightly to his abdomen. He set the emergency kit down on the chair opposite G’Kar’s, leaning over the desk to get a better look at the makeshift splint. “Break a few rib plates?” Considering the Narn rate of osteogenesis that shouldn’t be enough to warrant the obvious pain he was in…

“Na’Toth, please show the good doctor the door-”

“No.” She stood with her arms stiffly at her sides, her claws spread - to show their emptiness, perhaps, their lack of ill will? Or did it somehow indicate disobedience? “I asked him here. You will let him attend to you.”

“Na’Toth!” He sat up indignantly, but winced with pain as he moved. “You would defy me now?”

She circled to stand beside Stephen. “You have been stubborn enough. It is not improving. You know my will: I will obey, Kha’Ri’Akar, I will follow. But I cannot obey a dead man.”

G’Kar grimaced, staring at the two of them standing on the other side of his desk. After some consideration he deflated, his clawed hands moving to clutch at his abdomen as he slumped back in the chair. “Fine.”

Without another word, Na’Toth moved to his side of the desk, helping him to his feet. G’Kar shouldered stiffly out of his robe, standing in only a layer of linen tied tightly around his waist. Na’Toth unfastened the brace, undressing him deftly. They seemed to speak without words, so much exchanged in each glance and gesture.

Stephen propped his kit open as he watched them unwrap the bandages, dirtied with fresh blood and plasma. He frowned at the wound revealed on G’Kar’s lower back: a long transverse gash rimmed with an ugly spread of necrotic tissue, and surely the source of the acrid smell that had intensified after G’Kar undressed.

“Tell me what happened.”

The two Narns shared a long, hard look. Na’Toth’s steely glare was evidently meaningful - G’Kar sighed and nodded, before jerking his head toward the door. She shot Stephen a cautious look. He straightened his back, meeting her gaze steadily. Narns were sensitive to body language, and he tried to say _trust me_. She seemed to find this satisfactory, and bowed from the room.

Without Na’Toth’s support, G’Kar leaned one hand against the desk as Stephen circled around to inspect his back. “I was attacked.”

“Clearly. Poison?” He ran his medical scanner over the area, trying to gauge the depth of the necrosis - if it had reached the body cavity there might be an issue.

“…Yes.”

“If you know more, you have to tell me.”

“Drazi blade. I don’t know the exact blend of poison but it clearly had some… effect-” he winced as Stephen swabbed the area and sealed the sample in a canister. “I thought I had treated it sufficiently. I was wrong. May I sit now?”

Stephen looked around the room and spotted something like an ottoman that might serve his purpose. “There,” he indicated. “So I can sit on the floor behind you.” He stepped beside G’Kar and offered his arm, which was predictably declined. G’Kar made his way around the desk, and Stephen saw the way the edges of the wound were tugged with each step.

“A Drazi did this?”

“The blade was Drazi,” G’Kar answered wryly as he seated himself.

“G’Kar…”

“I don’t see how it’s relevant.” G’Kar looked over his shoulder as Stephen knelt on the ground behind him.

“Have it your way.”

Stephen was unfortunately familiar with the progress of necrosis in Narn tissue, and though the cause was different, the symptoms in G’Kar were ones he had treated before. “The poison has cut off blood flow to the area around the wound. I need to remove the gangrenous tissue before anything else - including those broken ribs. I’d prefer you to come to the MedLab, but - I know,” he interrupted G’Kar’s half-voiced protest. “I know. I’ll treat you here. Just give me a minute.”

He unfolded the portable instrument tray, setting it carefully on the end table next to the ottoman before checking the settings for the laser scalpel. As he set up his tools, he was struck by how very old and tired G’Kar looked. It was beyond physical pain, beyond stress and exhaustion, though all those were surely taking their due. It was grief; grief etched into every line on G’Kar’s face, and grief radiating from him even as he sat in perfect stoicism, making the room feel dark and still.

Stephen applied a topical anesthetic without asking, knowing that G’Kar would have declined it if given the opportunity. He spread his hand over G’Kar’s back, feeling a hint of the rough, shark-like skin even through his glove. Gently, he pressed lower against the edge of the wound to test the anesthetization, and when he was satisfied by G’Kar’s failure to flinch from the touch, he set about his work.

This was the kind of work he had done when he traveled, trying to make an asset of himself with only his wits and the bare essentials of his trade - and more improvisation than he would admit to a patient. He removed the gangrene as efficiently as possible, cauterizing the wounds as he progressed down the length of the cut. It went deep, but fortunately not deep enough to interfere with the soft tissue surrounding his lower organs. The smells in the air between them blended heady and rank - the sickly-sour of decay, the bitterness of burning flesh, the earthy musk of an unfamiliar incense. Stephen worked in silence, the buzz of the scalpel and G’Kar’s deep breaths the only sounds beyond the omnipresent thrum of the station beneath their feet.

With the main concern out of the way, he programmed a muscular routine into the portable regenerator and gave the entire area a thorough pass before covering it with a temporary dermal film. He sat back on his heels, scanning over his handiwork quickly. “That should do it for the wound. I’ll leave a few changes of dressing for Na’Toth to help you with, unless you’d prefer one of the Narn orderlies-”

“No,” he said quickly. “Na’Toth’s help is sufficient.”

“Alright. As far as I can tell, you did manage to disrupt the poison. It seems inert and your immune system should be able to take care of the rest, but I’ll run a couple more tests on the sample tonight. Tell me if you have any other issues. I mean it.”

G’Kar sat for a minute, experimentally straightening his back. “Na’Toth will Link you if there are complications.”

“Good. I can drop by next week to check in either way.” Stephen programmed his scanner for bone damage, finding nothing amiss with the thick, almost double-walled spinal column. He shuffled around to the side, scanning the rib-plating that lay beneath a section of sensitive, vascularized skin down the side of G’Kar’s torso. Among evidence of older injuries, the more recent fractures were already healed, if it could be called healing - knobs of new ossification roughly sutured the cracks together.

“Keep the brace on - if you’re feeling up to it in a week or two, I could take a look and shave off the excess bone growth. You have some from what I assume is a couple years ago as well.”

“I will keep it in mind.”

“Now can you tell me what happened?”

G’Kar sighed with exasperation, turning in his seat to face Stephen directly. “Why is this important to you?”

“I want to help, G’Kar. I hope that’s obvious. I care about what happens to your people. What happens to you.” He paused, unsure if he should commit to the thought that followed. But he did mean it. “I want to know who your enemies are. So they can be mine too.”

The statement hung in the air a moment. G’Kar’s face tensed, then relaxed, and Stephen couldn’t tell what it meant. “But it was not an enemy. Another Narn attacked me.”

Stephen froze in the middle of sterilizing the scalpel. “What the hell for?”

The smile that twisted G’Kar’s lips was bitter and cold. “For betraying him, of course.” He stared hard into Stephen’s eyes, looking for something. “I gave up his dignity, and my own, for the hope of help from aliens who would never feel as we feel. Can you understand that, Doctor?”

Stephen swallowed, sensing very clearly that G’Kar was not looking for a reply.

“I told them to stand down. I told them that if we played by your rules we might finally win an ally. That pity was better than death. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

As he gathered his things and rose to his feet, Stephen fought every instinct in his body to back away, showing G’Kar that he wasn’t going to run. “I know Earthforce couldn’t deliver - Sheridan’s trying, but his hands are tied. I’m sorry, Ambassador.”

G’Kar made the decision for him, however. He leapt to his feet with a snarl, knocking Stephen’s instruments to the floor as he advanced. Stephen was forced to step back or be bowled over, and he couldn’t help a terse gasp when G’Kar shoved him back against the desk. “It’s all your people ever have.” He spat the word like as much poison: “ _Apologies_.”

The room seemed to close in around them, hot and dense, as G’Kar towered over him. Stephen tensed in anticipation of a strike, pinned as much by a pair of sharp red eyes as the bulk of the Narn looming in toward him. “G’Kar… if it were up to me, you’d have a whole fleet.”

G’Kar made a strangled noise, not quite a laugh. “Why don’t you promise me every ship in your force? And do tell me how very _sorry_ you are that you can’t deliver.”

“I’m on your side. I swear it, I really am.” He felt like he was bargaining for his life. It would be easy for G’Kar: one well-aimed swipe across the throat, and all the medical knowledge in the galaxy wouldn’t save him. But for all his righteous fury, G’Kar wasn’t about to trade a well-placed ally for a split second of catharsis. Was he?

G’Kar’s face was closed to him, drawn tight in hard angles, incomprehensible agony burning behind his eyes. _I wish I could do more_ , Stephen thought he might say. But a wish like that would not be taken lightly.

“Do you know what Centauri say to us before they die?”

Stephen clenched his jaw, tried to return the intensity of G’Kar’s gaze. If he was about to relay some gruesome story, so be it. Stephen didn’t have to pretend to enjoy it. But staring into those blood red eyes, the look on G’Kar’s face was not of macabre pleasure. It was that absolute, wretched grief.

“They say, ‘I’m sorry.’ They insist that they never held anything against my people. They swear that they do not hate us. And they do not lie, when they are an inch from death,” G’Kar hissed. Stephen knew he must have spoken from experience, and the thought made it hard to breathe, harder yet to reply intelligently.

“That is the worst of it, doctor. They were our cause. We remade ourselves for them. Entire generations were dedicated and lost to them. But a Centauri does not consider a Narn his enemy. We were only ever an inconvenience sitting on a pile of rare metals - and for that inconvenience we lost everything. We were made into things less than animals. We had our histories and languages ripped from our mouths. But they never _hated_ us. We were never their cause. So when we caught them by their heels, wrenched the life from their hearts and demanded answers, all they ever had were _apologies_.”

Stephen’s mouth was dry, empty and dry. “You… you’re more than that. Your people are more than the war. More than an enemy to the Centauri.”

“We could have been,” G’Kar said, his eyes going stony and cold. “Do you remember the last time you came here to deliver an apology?”

“Of course.” He almost wished he didn’t, wished he hadn’t planted the idea in G’Kar’s head that maybe, of all things, _words_ could save his people.

“Then you must also remember how the noble Emperor declared that apology before his own people,” he sneered, leaning in close. “How bold he was, to admit he lived on the backs of dead slaves, to the son of a slave who knew all along. You must remember how his apology changed the course of our histories forever and forestalled war. Don’t you?”

Stephen looked away. The truth was, he had pitied Emperor Turhan, little more than a figurehead on a crumbling throne, surrounded by silver tongues and hidden blades. He lived a life devoid of choice and passion, something Stephen could never fathom. He was a man made to be used, both in life and death, a man who had only ever walked a path laid out by others. And he had tried, desperately tried, to make even the smallest right in his last days. But even if he had survived to deliver his message in front of hundreds - maybe G’Kar was right. Maybe nothing would have changed. Turhan traveled so far, for so little.

But pity was different than sympathy. Despite all the bitter cynicism G’Kar spat now, Stephen would never forget the stunned look in his face that day, the glimmer of hope shining through a crack in old armour. It felt undeserved now, to have witnessed that. It felt cruel.

“Dr. Franklin, if my enemies are yours, you would not hide my people away in the dark belly of this place like diseased animals. You would never treat a Centauri again, and you would make sure everyone knew why. You would stand by my side when they win,” he seethed, his voice a broken growl an inch from Stephen’s face. “You would be there when they come for my head.”

Stephen swallowed a tense breath. He wanted to argue, to tell G’Kar that he could do more this way, list off all the reasons he had to operate with discretion. He wanted to tell him not to be so assured of defeat.

But he could say none of those things with any sincerity, and instead he closed his left hand into a fist. He pressed it first to his own chest, then to G’Kar’s, the distance between them mere inches.

G’Kar’s eyes widened. And then, after a pause that seemed to last a lifetime, he started to laugh. It was a jarring, ugly sound, something ripped cruelly from his throat. His whole body sagged forward and, startled by the closeness, Stephen reached out with his free hand, instinctively trying to redirect pressure from the barely-closed gash on G’Kar’s back. Thick skin ran rough under his palms, grit over taut muscle.

“What have we done?” he cried in a hoarse and shaking voice, “Did we not fight well? Were we not pious?” Stephen couldn’t answer even if he had known what to say, busy gripping clumsily at G’Kar’s shoulder. Pulling to take his weight, pushing to keep from being crushed under him. G’Kar choked out a strangled noise, clutching at Stephen, the table, staggering like his legs had given out below him.

Eventually they settled, G’Kar’s weight leaned equally into the stone slab of his desk and into Stephen’s bracing grasp. His head slumped forward and he wept with wretched sobs, his temple pressed to Stephen’s, one heavy hand gripped into his upper arm. It hurt - five points of knife-like claws, barely restrained. He winced, but frozen in place by the fear of misstep, he simply held on.

G’Kar’s body heaved with ragged breaths, near enough to taste. Stephen closed his eyes, his fist still trapped between them as he willed his strength - whatever of it remained - to G’Kar. 

He didn’t know how long they stood there, caught in each other’s arms at tense, graceless angles. He barely breathed, barely moved. He willed himself to be steady as G’Kar wept, and met every shift from the Narn with a reassurance of his own. How deep the anguish in him ran, how profound the grief that tore from him, Stephen knew he would never understand. He never wanted to. But he thought maybe that was what G’Kar wanted - someone he did not have to stand tall for, someone who could not judge.

Gradually, he felt G’Kar’s shuddering breaths grow calmer, the vice on his arm ease. Stephen began to drop his hand from G’Kar’s chest, but a set of claws closed over his wrist and he held still.

G’Kar pulled away, just enough to look Stephen in the eyes. He guided his hand back to Stephen’s own heart, completing the gesture. Stephen didn’t know if it meant saving strength for himself, or if some was being returned. He nodded anyway, hoped whatever had passed between them held the appropriate gravity for G’Kar, hoped he hadn’t made any promise he couldn’t keep.

G’Kar took another breath, bowing his head before letting Stephen’s hand drop. He stepped away. Stephen exhaled, deflating momentarily against the desk as the tension swept out of him, leaving him exhausted.

In silence, G’Kar retrieved his robe and pinched close the clasp around his waist, letting Stephen collect his instruments from the ground. With his tools replaced in the kit, he made his way to the door, knowing there was nothing else to say. There was only work to do.

“Doctor.”

Stephen turned, and, still standing behind the desk, G’Kar pressed both fists to his chest and bowed. He’d been greeted like this many times, but he could feel the weight behind it this time.

He put the kit down and returned the gesture. “Ambassador,” he said. _I’m sorry_ , he thought. _I’m so sorry._

 


	3. EPIDEMIOLOGY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'Kar takes a walk and visits the Downbelow clinic.

G’Kar left the warmth of his quarters and walked the brisk halls of Green Sector early in the morning, for the first time in five days. The time had been spent alone, in increasingly irritable restlessness in his quarters, sequestered apparently for his own safety, and he was glad to finally be let out.

The announcement that quarantine was lifted for all but two species aboard came in the middle of the night, and he was not the only one enjoying the rediscovered freedom to roam the station. Other Narns and members of more crepuscular species like the Gaim and Balosian were about, some walking with intent and others more obviously aimless, simply enjoying the morning. It didn’t mean much - morning - on a station with no windows, floating through the perpetual night of space. But he was a creature of habit, and decades of habit had him stretching his legs each morning before tackling the day.

He decided he would make his daily visit to the clinic in Downbelow a bit early, making up for lost time. The bulk of the MedLab staff had been occupied with whatever crisis of disease had caused the recent commotion, but he had been assured that the Narn refugees still bedridden would be well-looked after. Doctor Franklin promised they would not turn out any Narn into Downbelow without credit to their name, but the matter nonetheless needed handling.

If any were to be released, he would need to find them accommodation, and the makeshift boarding-house in Brown sector was nearly full. The funding from Homeworld for their collective expense had been delayed amidst the commotion of war, and if he needed to pay for a new room with a cut of his own stipend, he would need an appointment with one of several bland-faced Earthforce grunts. With Na’Toth away on Homeworld, he would have to visit the rooming office himself…

He turned the logistics over in his mind as he paced down the hall to make a full loop of Green before heading to the elevator. The brighter day-setting lights would come on gradually, between 06h30 and 07h00 in the stunted Human day cycle, an hour before their day watch began. It was a meager approximation of G’Kar’s favourite time of day, but he still found some comfort in its approach.

In the calming dimness, he could imagine Narn’s horizon just barely lightening from blackness to a purplish red. The Earthers would call it burgundy - a colour named for a wine, which was named for a place, which was named for a people. For all its difficulties, G’Kar appreciated the eccentricity of the patchwork language, little histories tucked away in every corner.

As much as he had been sent to represent Narn, he had been sent to learn. With much of their own knowledge razed with cruel efficiency, the Narns quickly grew to appreciate the value of the galaxy around them. In the years after the occupation, vetted scientists, historians, and engineers of all (but one) species were invited to the Homeworld, and some paid quite handsomely indeed, working under wary supervision. Despite its suspicion of outsiders, Narn had nothing to hide, and everything to gain from their visitation. G’Kar, for his part, had been fascinated by some of these visitors, and his fascination had been noted. He ignored the rumours that followed him through the capital, trusting that his relentlessness in the political domain would prove out his devotion to Narn. Besides, half the rumours were true.

Eventually they decided to send him away, and he found that traveling suited him well. As a diplomat, with a diplomat’s access to many species’ low-security archives, G’Kar translated, copied, annotated, and sent home his remarks on countless volumes. There were such treasures hidden in what many considered inconsequential, dug out by Narns in their frenzy to learn, to dissect, to advance. Agriculture, postcolonial philosophy, metalwork, disaster ecology - no stone was not worth turning over in the rich fields of information that lay out in the stars, waiting for harvest.

G’Kar had learned such things in those years, inconsequential and world-moving alike. He learned with the appetite of a man starved, gorged himself on millennia of history and tore them apart, digesting them for his own betterment and that of Narn. He was advisor to a number of academic circles on Homeworld, but history was the area that interested him most, its cyclical repetition on dozens of worlds offering both hope and despair to him in the early years of their liberation.

Those were brilliant years, and yet the hardest of his life - so much harder than the single-minded determination that united them in their war. With such a dazzling array of possibilities stretching out in every direction, it was only by ironclad resolve that the Kha’Ri kept their world on course, shaping the people’s hunger and passion skyward. Some had balked at their determination, their willingness to stand on their dead, sometimes as literal as figurative. But every Narn knew the cost of complacence, and the cost of a life was nothing in comparison. Blood soaked into the foundations of every new construction, blood sowed every new field, and not a drop unappreciated. They had accomplished so much, with so much work, so much sacrifice, and now-

Now G’Kar came out of his reminiscence. Now they were at war and they were about to lose it all again.

G’Kar had begged. His pride was worth less than the aid he could garner. He had made himself small, clipped down his teeth and his claws, had given up the steadiness of his stance, all for scraps from a table where others dined. He was fed, he was kept alive, and he was leashed to this place, this cell with a perfect view of the battlefield. Every bone in his body ached to fight; all his blood called out for blood, and instead he paced around his cage like a defeated animal.

The thought soured in his mind. He stopped short of the junction that would have led to the end of his loop around Green Sector. He turned instead to the elevator and headed to Brown 74.

—

The Downbelow clinic was staffed by Doctor Khoury and two nurses who had become familiar to G’Kar over the course of the war. There were a handful of Narn orderlies, and he tried to feel brightened by their presence. But the pall that hung over him seemed to hang over them too, and they went about their ways.

Fal’Ghar, one of the young orderlies, came to him after he walked through the aisle between cots in the area cordoned off for their worst injured. “Kha’Ri’Akar,” she bowed quickly. “I did not expect to see you so soon.”

“I needed to walk. And I wondered how you fared here.”

“Dr. Franklin let a few of us work, if we accepted our quarantine within the clinic. We have maintained the night shift as usual while the Humans work on the Markab plague.”

“Plague?” G’Kar tilted his head. That explained the panic he heard in the Alien Sector before the quarantine was called. He had been shuffled off to his quarters, with all but emergency contact cut off. “What has happened?”

Fal’Ghar clicked her teeth in dismay. “Nothing good, I fear. We have not heard the details, but Dr. Khoury…” She looked over at the doctor typing out notes in the makeshift office. “She will not speak of it.”

“Has it affected our people?”

“No. As I understand it, we do not share the same neurological anatomy.”

“Thank the stars,” G’Kar sighed.

Fal’Ghar nodded, looking absently at the patients beside them. “We have enough to worry us.”

“Do not lose sight of the battle for the war. Keep your aim true.” Platitudes, but true ones.

She opened her mouth, but hesitated. She lifted her eyes to his slowly. “Kha’Ri’Akar… we have all heard such rumours. About the Centauri having… allies.” Ah. The reason for her approach was now clear.

“Rumours are of little substance. Even when they prove out in truth, what is to be gained in wondering?” Her posture slumped fractionally. Disappointment. But she would be more disappointed to hear him speak plainly, G’Kar thought. “Know that whatever twisted allyship the Centauri have gained, they will never gain righteousness. That our fighters will fight to their last, with the truth on our side.”

There was unmoving steel in her expression when she looked up at him fully. “I want to fight. Being here with the Humans when my sisters, barely more than pouchlings, are taking up arms-”

G’Kar gripped her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Do you think my blood aches any less than yours? I want to score our name into their hearts. I want to tear the sun from their sky. But I am here, and you are here, and there is work for us both.”

She did not quaver, staring back at him. “There is more at home, or on the warships - with the training they have given us here, I am as much a healer as some of the medics from Homeworld! I can wield both scalpel and sword.”

“And you can wield them both here.”

“To lesser effect,” she insisted, gesturing with her hands as he still held her. “You may have your place here, but the rest of us would serve better in the war. Why do you deny this? G’Srok, one of your own, you kept him here when he wanted to board the _G’Nell_ with his mother. Are you-” her voice dropped, uncertain. “Are you… afraid for us? Afraid our deaths will be wasted?”

G’Kar’s heart surged with - with strange and intense envy, he realized, far more than any pride or worry. Fal’Ghar was young - born after the first occupation - so young some of the spots on her chin had not even come in yet. At her age he had led a force of twenty as part of a strike on a Centauri mining camp. At her age he had long since stopped counting his kills. At her age he had lived without fear, because death towered over him in every minute of every day, as familiar to him as the searing of the sun and the softness of the moons.

He once lived for victory, with solid ground under him and sure purpose above. She only sought the same. He would be cruel to condemn her spirit to the same contemptible fate as the universe found fit for his, in the waning hours of his life. _Are you afraid_ , she asked. No, not for them.

He sighed, releasing her. “Do you seek glory, Fal’Ghar?”

“No,” she said firmly, “Not my own.” But the fire in her eyes told him something else. Her brood parents must have been close to G’Kar’s age, must have fought tooth and claw like all the rest and raised her on stories of their liberation. It was only fair that she longed to prove herself, even if he regretted that she was given the opportunity now.

“G’Quan wrote that satisfaction comes not from the act, but the knowledge that the act serves the whole. If the whole calls you, answer as its part.”

She stood still for a moment, then began to smile hopefully, nervous energy fidgeting her hands. “Then… would you recommend me? The next transport carrying refugees - perhaps they could take me in the exchange?”

He thought for a moment. “Akar’ya Na’Toth returns in two days from Homeworld. She can seek passage for you on the ship back, with my recommendation.”

She beamed, sharp teeth flashing bright. “Thank you.”

“Fight well. Heal better.” _And perhaps you will find a better death than I._

“I will find my place, Kha’Ri’Akar.” She drew her fist to her own chest and bowed deeply, exposing the spines at the back of her head and neck. He bowed in return, witnessing for her: supplication not to him, but to greater purpose. He only wished that it would come so easily to him.

Together they walked through the clinic, G’Kar speaking briefly to the infirmed and Fal’Ghar noting their conditions since his last visit. The lights outside in the hallway began to brighten as the clock reached 06h30. As he turned toward the patients on the other side of the aisle, he was surprised to see Doctor Franklin walk into the clinic.

He had expected Franklin to be busy with whatever work was involved in administering to the Markab, even as the crisis had passed. G’Kar stood still in the corner and watched as the doctor made straight for the office, spoke with Doctor Khoury, and, after she passed him a data crystal and pointed out a few patients, assumed her place in the chair. They talked for a few more minutes, and when she left, he took a slow breath, reached into the drawer beside him, and dosed himself with a stim. He then slotted the data crystal into the terminal in front of him and set about working.

Franklin’s demeanor told G’Kar little. He supposed that others must be working with those still under quarantine, that Franklin had found it pertinent to check in with the clinic in Downbelow after a week away. It was, after all, his little project in the making. G’Kar had met many like him in the early years after the occupation - Human healers and builders flocked to G’Khamazad, drawn like insects to the light of their ruins. They were sometimes interesting, but always useful, so long as one could suffer their self-righteousness. G’Kar had suffered worse, for less.

Franklin blinked at him slowly when he approached, for a moment seeming to look entirely through him before his eyes focused. “Ambassador G’Kar,” he nodded. He reached up behind his ear and tuned a small dial on his hearing aid - G’Kar had gathered that the register of Narn voice was difficult for the device to discern from the station’s background hum in Downbelow. “Something I can do for you?”

“Merely making my rounds as the quarantine has lifted.”

“Right. Dr. Khoury has been taking care of things well. I’m just checking in myself, giving her a breakfast break. Going back up to MedLab One later…” His eyes drifted back to the terminal in front of him.

“I thought you would be attending to the business with the Markab.”

Franklin’s expression did not change when he said, “No business. We didn’t get it in time.”

G’Kar frowned, waiting for more explanation that did not follow, as Franklin’s gaze stayed fixed to his work station. “Then all the Markab aboard…”

“Dead.”

“I see.”

The flatness in Franklin’s face and voice puzzled him. They had hardly spoken since Franklin came to him in his quarters - only two cursory check-ups and brief nods when G’Kar visited the other Narns in the clinic, with both parties assuming a business-like default. G’Kar knew very well the toll that could be taken from a sympathetic heart, but he had not expected to see the man turned so cold so quickly.

“Brown 32 is closed off. Most of the remains will be cremated today.” Franklin scribbled into his datapad, eyes flicking back and forth between his notes and the terminal in front of him. “Septis will be a dead world soon.”

“My condolences, Doctor, I knew you were close w-”

“No,” Franklin snapped, slamming his stylus down onto the table suddenly. “No fucking condolences today.”

They stared at each other for a moment in surprised silence. Not so lifeless after all. Lines ringed Franklin’s eyes, his face drawn long and gaunt - weakness expressed itself so clearly on Human faces. His gaze wavered under G’Kar’s, and he deflated, sighing and putting a hand to his forehead. “Sorry. Maybe I need a drink,” he offered as a half-joke, presumably having forgotten it was barely morning.

“You need rest.”

Franklin grimaced. “Don’t know how I could sleep right now. I just need to work. You understand.”

“Of course. But careful not to wear yourself so thin.”

Franklin smiled dryly. “You’re one to talk, Ambassador.”

G’Kar spread his hands in appeal. “May we drop our roles a while?” He motioned to the chair beside the desk. Franklin shrugged.

“I believe we may both be the type to prefer suffering in silence to asking for the help of another…” Franklin shot G’Kar a rather scathing look as he took a seat. He supposed he earned it. For a brief moment they said nothing, both deciding whether to leave the obvious omission alone. In the end, it went unremarked. “But seeing you troubled…”

“It’s no secret what happened. I figured news would get around the station soon enough, I…” he paused, his expression darkening and his lips drawing into a tense line. “We had a solution.”

“A cure?”

“Not exactly. It would have taken time. But they didn’t… they only…” his voice trailed off. G’Kar waited, as he stared away into the middle distance. “They could have figured it out easily, if they’d looked - if they’d allowed themselves to look, if they’d given themselves the time. That’s really the worst part. I didn’t do anything they couldn’t have done.”

“And their foolishness is their downfall, but one that you are blameless in.”

“I know it’s not my _fault_ , I’m just- I came down here so I could do something that will go right. So I could save a life or two. Maybe that’s selfish, I don’t know…” He rubbed at his closed eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry if to you, it feels like I’m just stroking my ego here.”

“You Humans rather enjoy the luxury of intent. I care little whether you save Narn lives because of your magnanimity or your vanity, just that you do it.” It wasn’t entirely the truth, but it was close enough.

That earned a faint, tired smile. “Well, I suppose I’m glad for that.”

Franklin sighed and began to fidget with the stylus in his hand. “I used to be idealistic, thinking that every illness just needed a cure. One in, one out. I went into medicine thinking it would be my job to solve tidy little puzzles, that health was a simple matter of breaking things into parts and fixing the ones that were broken.” G’Kar disliked the scorn in his voice - self-criticism was necessary, but self-contempt was indulgent.

“We simplify the world in order to understand it. I make polemical analogy. You make models, take rates and averages.”

“Rates and averages aren’t impartial. Models are simplifications of what someone _decides_ is important - those Markab doctors, they decided what was important was not to rock a sinking boat,” he smiled humourlessly. “They were brilliant and they were afraid, afraid of doing their fucking jobs, as afraid of being called impure as they were afraid of the damned plague itself. And now they’ve all gone and died and we won’t even know what to do with the ashes. Where do they go when all the Markabs are dead? We’re probably going to aim them at the sun and space them tomorrow, for God’s sake. It’s just so-”

Franklin turned to him, a desperate and searching look in his eyes. “It’s so _stupid_ , G’Kar. So stupid and senseless. They created the perfect breeding ground for their plague, in prejudice and fear and goddamn - _purity_ , and callousness-” his voice went tight with emotion as he rambled. G’Kar let him. “Disease isn’t just vectors and immunities, you know, it’s… underfunded research, and bad administration, and prejudice, and poverty, and everything that makes a society. Disease changes, it adapts, it lives and dies as its world is created around it, and the Markab gave disease a perfect world, gave it the keys to the city.”

“You believe this could only have been solved by remaking Markab society?”

Franklin scrunched up his nose and brow in distaste. “Maybe. The only way to tackle the plague competently at all would be to acknowledge that it didn’t only affect the…” he paused, searching for a term.

“Enemy.”

“No, the people they thought were… impure. I guess an enemy in a philosophical sense.”

“What other sense is there?”

Franklin’s lips twisted as he looked at G’Kar. It might be a kind of amusement. “But acknowledging that the disease did not discriminate would mean revisiting the whole idea of moral purity, which was such a volatile subject. Change would take generations, I think, and in that time…” he sighed, exasperated. “It’s inevitable to have a crisis like this - maybe not one as drastic - when people with power decide that those without it deserved their circumstance.”

“Things like that, power and exploitation, they don’t just come about, we build whole worlds around them. The Markab built a entire story about the people of Drafa just so they could tighten the reins of moral control. Good epidemiology is also good ecology. And good ecology knows that we don’t just emerge into a whole, unchanging environment. We make environment, and it makes us; all of us, bacteria or animal, we all create a world for each other and ourselves. Neither came first, and it’s a process of - something like mutual creation and mutual destruction, things eating other things, shaping new things in the process.”

G’Kar leaned in with unfeigned interest. “A rather Narn viewpoint, Doctor.”

Franklin sat back, blinking as he realized how he had digressed. “Is it?”

“You sound almost like a follower of G’Quan,” G’Kar continued, which made Franklin smile again, a bit livened this time. “We believe things are ever in motion, that even a moment of stillness belies opposing forces, until one overcomes the other.”

“Right,” Franklin nodded intently. “It’s the same in biology - our bodies maintain homeostasis by regulating dozens of systems at once.”

“Life is, by nature, change, though we find in it moments of stability and moments of struggle. Both are essential. G’Quan believed that one needs only to push in the right moment, in the right direction, to align the forces to create change. That belief kept us alive, kept us struggling against impossible odds, because to see the state of our world as immutable was an ultimate despair - and, in the end, ultimately untrue.”

“Lately things only ever seem to change for the worse.” He paused, considering G’Kar. “Sorry. I don’t meant to be pessimistic.”

“These are rather pessimistic times, I’m afraid.” They looked at each other, and G’Kar wondered if Franklin thought, too, of the moment they had shared weeks ago. “But G’Quan’s philosophy is one of optimism. We believe we are each the nexus of forces that push and pull in every direction. And we each have our place, whether that means finding where the currents are still, or diving into the crashing tide and shaping its direction ourselves.”

“How do you know which it is?” To the detriment of his own hearing, Franklin often faced people directly in conversation, but now he angled his hearing ear toward to G’Kar in a little gesture of attentiveness. G’Kar found it rather charming.

“How indeed,” G’Kar chuckled. “The usual ways, I suppose. Prayer and argument.”

“I guess we all have that in common. I just wish I could have gone back and found my place in this a little earlier. Dr. Lazarenn said they had been working on a cure in secret. If I’d only known how serious it was, I could have met with them. I could have helped.” He sighed deeply, slumping back in his chair. “There were so many points along the way this could have been stopped. It was so _doable_.”

“That is the tragedy of history, doctor. When its course is laid bare it becomes so clear, yet we seem to repeat its mistakes.”

“Hindsight is 20/20.” At G’Kar’s expression he explained, “Old Human expression, has to do with visual acuity. It means… well, you get the gist. Easier to see the right choices after you’ve made the wrong ones.”

“Yes, but one too engrossed in history tends to forget that history is also being made as we speak, by people very much like ourselves.” Franklin all but flinched at that, his eyes flitting over to the clinic in front of them - a heavy conscience, G’Kar supposed, weighed down by more life than any one person should bear. He knew the feeling.

Franklin chewed on the end of his stylus - older teeth marks lined the top inch of hard plastic. “It feels like we’re always too late. Everything that should have been done wasn’t done in time, and all the pure hearts and intentions in the world aren’t enough to fix the mess we’re left with.”

“And yet we must try, or our survivors will think the same of us. We struggle against the despair that one never feels capable of changing the course of history in its moment. The path beneath our feet seems too entrenched, the walls around us too high, the pull of inertia too powerful. But we must fix our gaze, and turn the eyes of those around us. A belief means nothing if it is held only by one person, because at the crux of G’Quan’s philosophy: we never act alone. Anything and anyone can be surmounted with the force of the people.”

“That… _is_ optimistic.”

“That is how we won.”

Franklin regarded G’Kar for a long moment. “I hope you win again. With all my heart.”

“Oh, doctor, of course we will. Whether I am there to see it is another question. I entrust myself to your care to keep me alive a little longer in the hopes that I might.”

“I will,” Franklin said with certainty. There passed on his face a fleeting moment of serenity amid despair, perhaps even unknown to him. But G’Kar saw it clearly - the face of a man with purpose. “I suppose of the two of us, you’re more used to winning long odds.”

“Your people won the Minbari’s surrender,” G’Kar said with an amused smile.

Franklin rolled his eyes. “Sure.”

The thought settled in G’Kar’s mind suddenly, that Franklin was right. G’Kar was accustomed to winning. In long, brutal conflict, yes, weighed with horrible cost and fear, yes, but he had won, over and over until he won the only thing that mattered. And now, for the first time, he stood to lose much more than he could gain, and he felt himself standing at the edge of the gaping maw of a word, one he could hardly fathom. Defeat.

“Were you there?”

“At the Battle of the Line? Yeah. It felt like everyone was there. We were getting shuffled around a lot - I ended up at a military hospital in St. Petersburg. But it didn’t seem to matter much. They didn’t leave a lot of patients for us to work with,” he smiled grimly.

“The Centauri are just as thorough.”

“It seemed like it was just _business_ to them,” Franklin said, with forcefulness and bitterness. “They hit every escape pod like it was a point on a list of chores.” G’Kar was surprised at his disdain. It lent an interesting colour to the character he had first understood from intelligence reports, which told the story of a man who was nearly discharged from EarthForce for moral defiance, who valued life above politics, whose pathos might be easily appealed to (that part had proved true, of course).

“They called it a holy war.”

Franklin scoffed. “We didn’t feel any passion. Damnation, maybe. We just stared down the barrels of their guns and hoped it would be quick.”

In G'Kar's youth, he had never feared death, for the knowledge that there were hundreds or thousands at his back. He had known, then, as surely as he had known the steadiness of his own hands, that no death of his own would stop the tide of his people.

“What was it like?” _What was it like, knowing death was coming to your entire world, in horrible thunder and heat? What was it like, to wait?_

Franklin turned to face him directly. “We weren’t on the list for evacuations. We heard the updates coming in over the PA: Beta Durani, Proxima III, then Io and Ganymede. For hours. Days. The longer it went on the more surely we knew nobody was coming to our rescue.

“Close to the end, a few of the staff stopped working. Some prayed. I remember some looking out of the windows like they’d be able to see it coming. When the advance bypassed Mars and came straight for Earth, a few took tranqs and laid down in the spare cots. I didn’t blame them. But a few of us kept working until what we thought would be the end, just in case it wasn’t. I suppose, out there, the fighters were doing the same.

“It was terrible, G’Kar. But somehow I wasn’t afraid.”

“Of course. What purpose serves fear, in the face of certainty?”

Franklin looked at him sadly, with perfect understanding. “But I lived. The sky didn’t fall. My job wasn’t done.”

G’Kar went silent. What a curse it would be, to outlive his world. To bear penance for his fascination with the strange, the unknown, the foreign: condemnation, able only to watch, from the outside, as the flames took everything in the home he had not loved well enough.

“I know you hate to think it, but this could be where you do your best work. We’ve been sending your people back to Narn space for months, and it feels…” Franklin trailed off, peering at G’Kar. He knew. It felt pointless because it _was_ pointless. “Rather than just throwing yourself into the fray with them, you could win support. Allies. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

 _And what is it I have won for our world so far_ , G’Kar thought. _You?_   One Human who might go so far as to lay down his life for Narn. That might be admirable, but it was the wrong Human - this one was kind and stubborn, but without influence and only meant to heal, to repair what was broken. They did not need to be repaired, now - they needed not to break at all.

“I know it must feel bleak, right now, but you’ve made headway. Sheridan and Delenn and the rest of C&C, they’re- their hearts are in the right place. They respect you, they’re willing to help-”

G’Kar held up a hand to stop him. There was no need for platitudes from one who knew their hollowness. “I have my place, Doctor. It is simply a matter of accepting it.” After a considering pause he added, “I think we may both be looking for the same thing.”

Franklin’s expression dimmed, having returned from the brief distraction of G’Kar’s tragedy, to his own. “I guess so.”

G’Kar stood. A broken and weary person should not - could not be leaned on. But it seemed to G’Kar that he knew very few unbroken and unweary people anymore. “I believe I have burdened you enough for one morning.”

Franklin did not protest at his leave, but sat upright when G’Kar made the sk’lekh, his fists pressed to his chest. G’Kar bowed his head more deeply than he should, exposing the back of his head to the ceiling. Franklin would not understand what he witnessed, when he nodded in return, but to G’Kar, it seemed enough.

“Get some rest, G’Kar.”

“You as well, Doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [checks watch] dialectical biology time babey


	4. SAME OLD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen calls home.

A few hundred years of comms systems and they still hadn’t found a way to ease the anxiety of being left waiting for someone to pick up the line. Stephen folded his hands and rested them on the table, then decided that was too formal, then leaned forward and tented his fingers under his chin, then decided that was too ridiculous. He double-checked the connection between his hearing aid and the terminal and fiddled with the volume, which was exactly as fine as he had been a minute ago. He smoothed out the front of his shirt for the fourth or fifth time. He crossed his arms. The screen blinked to life, and he immediately uncrossed them, trying not to look impatient.

“Stephen? What the fuck?”

“…Celia?”

A quirked eyebrow, and a familiar wry smile. “Uh, yeah. You’re the one that called.”

“I wasn’t… what are you doing at Mom and Dad's?”

“It’s Sunday,” she said, like that explained everything.

Celia leaned back in their mother’s desk chair. The home office had been redecorated recently - well, more recently than the last time he visited, which was about four years ago. There was a painting hanging behind Celia, some landscape that was indistinct through the viewscreen. It hung next to the window that let in the last pinkish moments of sunset as a breeze billowed out the curtain. Sunlight. Fresh air. He felt a twinge of strange jealousy, thinking of how easily those little luxuries were enjoyed.

“Last Sunday of the month we usually come by - Kathy, Marie and me,” she clarified, as if he wouldn’t know who she meant by ‘we’. “Whenever Dad isn’t away, or one of us isn’t offworld, or busy with… whatever thesis work, you know. She’s still running that study with the fish.”

“Right,” he said. He always meant to ask Kathy more about that study - something about new parasites in the Martian aquaponic farms. It had sounded interesting.

“Yeah. Anyway. Guess you wanted to talk to Mom?”

He swallowed anxiously. “Actually…”

“Dad? Jeez. What happened? Are you okay?” She leaned forward with what appeared to be genuine concern.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m fine, Cee.”

Celia squinted at him in the screen. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re always calling around to check in with Dad. Suuuper normal.”

“Guess you heard about how well his visit to Babylon 5 went.”

“Not really.” She shrugged, leaning back again and twisting a loop of hair in her finger (the ‘I’m not that interested in this conversation’ twist, not the ‘so there’s this girl…’ one). “We saw about the op on the news but he… you know. Doesn’t really talk about personal stuff.” _Doesn’t really talk about you._

“Yeah, well, it was about what you’d expect. Cold shoulder until he tried to billet fifty jarheads in MedLab and the Captain called me in to ‘smooth things over.’”

“The old ‘Dr. Franklin, no relation’ didn’t fly?”

“It’s harder to make it work when we’re in a room together. Anyway, same old.”

“Same old,” she repeated skeptically.

“You know, he calls me a coward in front of my boss and I call him a murderer. Same old.”

Celia gave him a withering look. “So B5 is going great I guess.”

“I like the work. Being so close to EarthForce, not as much.”

“Suits you, I think. Like your roadtrip 2.0, except the different species come to you, right?” She propped her chin up in one hand and waved the other showily. “Come to see the famous Dr. Franklin: xenobiologist extraordinaire. He’s been to like, ten planets or something.”

“Fourteen,” he muttered. “But it’s not like that. Most of the species have their own doctors here, Humans just have the biggest staff.” Stephen leaned back in his chair, away from the desk with his arms crossed again. More defensive than impatient, now.

“Hey, is that your room? I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He kicked aside in his rolling chair to allow Celia a view, tilting the screen toward the sofa. He pointed out a framed drawing next to the door panel. “Just got that from a patient’s family a few weeks ago. It’s an illustration from an Iksha novel. I don't really get it, to be honest, but I think Mom would like it?"

“Probably. She's into that abstract line stuff. Bigger spot than I expected for a station gig.”

“Separate bedroom and everything. It’s smaller than your old room though.”

“Pretty plush. And… clean,” she said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

“I was calling for Dad, remember? Gotta pass inspection so he doesn’t get distracted trying to chew me out.” He angled the screen back toward himself.

“At least these days he’s not giving you shit about the dates you bring home.”

“When he was home to meet them, you mean.”

“Nuh-uh,” she wagged her head. “You don’t get to complain about family absenteeism.” She raised her eyebrows, unamused but not visibly reprimanding.

“Ouch. Had to get it from somewhere, didn’t I?” The face Celia made was more of a grimace than anything. “Anyway,” Stephen smiled, hoping to change tack, “There were a couple guys I only kept around for the sake of pissing him off. And the one girl.”

“Yeah.” she said idly, giving him a weak smile. Stephen all but saw the scale balancing in her head: gloss over it for civility’s sake, or pick that bone a little more? “You know sometimes he just thought they weren’t good enough for you, right?” Oof. Perfect middle ground.

“Sometimes he thought I wasn’t good enough for me either.”

Her expression softened as she leaned forward to rest her chin on her hand. “I know. I know. It’s not like I’m trying to give him a Dad of the Year award or anything, it’s just, it seems like you get thinking about him and you only see his disapproval.”

“Yeah, because he _does_ fucking disapprove of me. And he reminds me of it every time we talk. The two years I was enlisted was probably the only time he could ever admit he had a son at all.”

She huffed a breath upward, blowing a few strands of hair loose from the rest that swept across her forehead. “You know it’s not just about the Force, Stephen, or you not being _respectable_ enough. Me and Kathy never served either, and you’re a fucking doctor. It’s not about any of that, it’s about…”

“Me.”

Celia groaned, leaning her head back. “You know I don’t mean it like that. It’s just - not every conversation with him has to turn into an argument about Earth Alliance foreign policy or whatever. You get on with Mom fine, and she’s married to him…”

“Mom has tact.”

“Yeah, a quality _you_ also lack entirely.” She sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. You probably just wanted to reminisce or whatever.” Stephen resented the flutter of relief in his chest. He was not _scared_ of having this argument again, just tired, as if he needed more things to be tired by. Celia scratched her head thoughtfully for a moment. “Who was that guy from soccer that Mom really liked…?”

“Tristan? Mom just liked him because he spoke Spanish and didn’t mind doing housework.”

“Uh, yeah, obviously. And he was _ripped_.”

“Which is why I liked him,” Stephen snorted. “Until I realized instead of a brain he just had a bunch of rocks rattling around in his skull.”

“It’s hard to believe you’ve been a snob your entire life. It usually takes time to develop, you know.”

“He thought wearing enough sunscreen would make him fireproof.”

“And yet your greatly superior intellect deigned to tap that.”

“Desperate times, Cee.”

She laughed. And for a fleeting moment Stephen thought, maybe it could be like this all the time. Maybe it wouldn’t even be hard.

“You all really visit every month?” He had no reason to feel guilty. Technically. It wasn’t as though he could fly home whenever he wanted. And even if he did, he would only ruin the mood.

“Try to. Just me and Kathy today, but she went to catch the shuttle back to the Dome already. I come more often if I can, since I’m the closest to home and Mom’s kinda bored with the whole semi-retirement thing. She keeps trying to get me into all her weird new hobbies and it’s making me totally bonkers. You should call her more.”

“I know,” Stephen sighed.

“You always _know_ ,” she countered. “You never _do_.”

There was no arguing that, where Mom was concerned. “I’m calling now.”

“Why _are_ you calling, anyway?”

“I don’t know if I should really talk about it. It’s… work related,” he offered.

“Work related,” she scoffed. “Oooo-kay, Doc-tor Franklin.”

“Sorry. It’s… well, it’s not confidential, or anything. Do you really want to hear it?”

She paused, staring at him in the comm. “Stephen. Are you fucking serious? Of course I want to hear it. You haven’t talked to any of us for, like, months at this point. You and Dad have it out again and neither of you bothers to say a word about it, but at this point, who cares, I guess, ‘cause ' _same old_ ’. When I saw the call was from Babylon 5, my first thought was that it was gonna be your captain calling 'cause you fucking died, and that I would have to be the one to tell Mom and Dad that you fucking died. But no. It was you. Calling on a Sunday and you don’t even know what that means, asking for Dad like that’s something you ever do. So tell me what’s so important that you probably had to dig up your own personnel file to find your home routing number because you sure as hell have never used it before!”

They stared at each other, across half a galaxy and three decades of family history.

Stephen chewed on his lip for a moment. “I’m… sorry. I never think - I never remember that it bothers you guys.”

“Yeah. Because you never remember that you have family other than Dad.”

“That’s not true,” he protested. “But I can… I see why you feel that way. To your point, okay. Here: I’m calling to make a complete ass out of myself. How much have you heard about what’s happening to the Narns?”

“The Narns?” she repeated with surprise. “Uh, I mean, as much as is on the ‘casts. They’re at war with the Centauri again.”

“They’re not-” he stopped himself. No time for a semantic argument right now. “They’re being steamrolled. They’re going to lose. We’ve been… seeing Narn refugees,” he said with sudden carefulness, having remembered there might be eavesdroppers on the transmission. “We’ve heard about Centauri warships retreating from Narn colonies rather than finish the job, and I think it’s like the last days of the Minbari War, except the Centauri aren’t going to surrender at the last minute. I think they’re headed straight for the Narn Homeworld. Something is about to happen.”

“…And you want _Dad_ to do something about it?”

It did sound incredibly stupid, coming from another person. “I don’t know,” Stephen deflated, putting his hands over his face. “I’m sick to my stomach just sitting here watching it happen. I don’t have anyone else to beg for help anymore. I just have to feel like I’ve done what I can.”

“Jeez,” she said softly. “You know it’s not your job to save the whole galaxy, right?”

“I know. But I have to try, don’t I?”

“I guess you do.” She looked at him pityingly. “Just don’t feel like it’s your fault if it doesn’t work. And get some sleep after this. Full offense, but you look like shit.”

“Feel it, too.”

“Great time to talk to Dad then.” She stretched her arms up overhead. “I’ll get him over here. They’re probably done dessert. You could call again, you know. We could talk about something fun next time.”

“Yeah. It- it was nice talking, Cee. Seriously. Sometimes I do forget I have family that doesn’t think I’m a huge disgrace.”

“Uh, thanks? Don’t ever write greeting cards. But you too.” She waved at the screen before getting out of the chair and out of view of the office terminal.

Stephen exhaled in a slow breath, leaning his head back as he waited. Barely audible, he heard Celia’s voice as she called for their father down the hall. He could picture her route to the living room, in the smaller apartment his parents bought when he and his sisters had all moved away. He wondered if it had all been redecorated too, since his last visit, wondered if the memory of it in his head was only that now - a memory.

His posture stiffened instinctively when he heard the creak of the office door. His heart sank into his stomach when two faces appeared on the viewscreen.

“Stephen! Is everything alright?” His mother wheeled over the other desk chair and sat close to the screen, while his father assumed the chair Celia had used, at exactly the distance he found it.

“Hi Mom. Yeah, I’m okay. Hi Dad.”

His father only nodded.

“Celia told me you wanted to talk to your father, but I wasn’t about to not talk to my favourite son,” the reprimand clearly written in a footnote as she peered at him over the rim of her glasses. Her hair was pulled up into a neat bun - more gray than black now - and she was certainly dressed for Sunday dinner, wearing one of her favourite cardigans, the green one with embroidered flowers down one side. She looked well. He felt almost guilty for his own appearance in comparison.

He smiled faintly. “Sorry I haven’t called lately. It’s… been busy.”

“It’s alright, Stephen. We’re just glad you’re here now. You… you look tired. It’s late there, isn’t it? How has Babylon 5 been treating you?”

How indeed. He looked at his father, whose implacable expression remained exactly that. “Not bad. It’s challenging, it’s educational… It’s the kind of thing I’ve always wanted, a position where I can meet a lot of different species. Working with alien doctors has really been the best part. A lot of different perspectives to learn from,” he said, unable to resist a pointed glance at his father.

“That’s so good,” she nodded, ignoring the snipe.

“Cee told me you’re already a little bored of retirement.”

“Semi-retirement,” she corrected. “And I wouldn’t say bored, I’m just used to routine. Having free time all of a sudden has been an adjustment.”

“Up to anything fun?”

“This and that. I’m trying to turn this room into a studio and get back into drawing if I can. I’m pretty rusty, though.”

“I remember some of the doodles you used to leave us. I think- actually, I saved a few. They’re around somewhere… Maybe I can start adding to the collection again soon?”

“Oh, you suck-up,” she laughed. “Of course. I’ll send you something as soon as it doesn’t look like a five-year-old did it.”

He looked at both his parents on the viewscreen, his mother leaning in close over the arm of her chair, his father in perfect posture and dispassion. When was the last time he saw them in the same room? When was the last time he talked to them as though they lived in a version of this family that worked?

“So what’s the big news?”

“It’s not… news. It’s business. Kind of.” His mother raised an eyebrow - a dangerous sign. He wasn’t about to shoo her from the conversation; if anything, having her there might temper Old Firestorm a little. But he hadn’t expected to make this uncomfortable appeal with an audience, and he took a slow breath before continuing, “It’s about the Narns.”

“The Narns?” His father said, incredulously, breaking his silence. “That’s what you called here for?”

“Dad-”

“Richard. Will you at least let him talk? What’s going on, Stephen?”

“You probably know as much as anyone in Earth Alliance knows. But Babylon 5 is close to their space and we’ve been hearing things here - things that make me think they’re going to pull their forces and hit the Narn Homeworld hard. And soon - within the next couple days.”

“The first casualty of war is the truth. You believe everything you hear?” Stephen could all but see his father resisting the urge to stand up and lecture, hands clasped firmly behind his back as he paced.

“I’m not an idiot, Dad. But it doesn’t take a genius to see that the Narns are losing. The Kha’Ri have been trying to hide their casualties, but I’ve been seeing their refugees. I’ve heard from their front lines. Something is going to happen soon, I know it.”

“And what do you expect me to do about it, doctor?” It was remarkable how his father could find a way to take his title - something people called him every hour of every day, usually with respect, and always with acknowledgment - and make it sound like an insult. It was his way of highlighting all the other titles Stephen might have, but didn’t. The man he wasn’t.

“I don’t _expect_ you to do anything,” Stephen said, his jaw clenched around the words. “But I was hoping that I could get you to care. To make an appeal, to people who will listen. Something will happen soon - some strike on the Narn Homeworld, and unless someone comes in on their side, there might not be a Narn Homeworld next week.”

“You always seem to forget that my duty is to _our_ homeworld. _This_ world, that you haven’t set foot on in years.”

“There’s so much more out there, out here - you’ve seen so much, you’ve traveled so far, why do you always act like Earth is the only planet that matters?”

“It’s our home,” his mother interjected. “And it’s yours too - it always will be, no matter how long you spend out in the stars. We just want you to- to feel that. To feel like you can come home, to feel like you want to.”

“This isn’t about me, damn it! This is about something so much more important!”

“And to me, nothing is more important than my duty. Earthforce doesn’t exist to be the galaxy’s peacekeepers. We exist to protect Earth, not to bail out one side of a war we have no stake in!”

“We did exactly that in the Dilgar War, and it won us our place in the galaxy. Because you know, I suppose if it’s not enough to do the right thing, you could do the strategic thing. The Narns clawed their way from next to nothing to being one of the greatest powers in the galaxy in thirty years - you don’t think it’s worth having them as allies?”

His father scoffed, exasperated. "And what kind of ally is a Narn? You’ve heard the news, I know you have, because this is the kind of thing you care about. More Narns dead in the decade after the occupation ended, than in the decade before. They care more about expanding their reach than feeding their own people. They’re vicious people, power-hungry - and they’re trouble, them and the Centauri. They’re going to be trouble for as long as they’re around. Grudges like that never end.”

Stephen thought suddenly of G’Kar, with the weight of billions of lives hanging around his neck, struggling to keep his head up with the furious hope that his world would survive. He thought of G’Kar still standing, still demanding everything that he was owed. He thought of G’Kar praying for the dying, weeping for the dead, fighting for the living - it was so unfair, so callous, that someone lightyears away, never having held his grief in their hands, could think him cruel, could look at passion deeper than the oceans and call it a grudge.

“Narns are not _vicious_ , they might be vengeful but they’re not the warmongers here - they were desperate to keep the Centauri from crushing them again. They still are. They saw the cost of security and decided it was worth paying.”

“The cost of security?” His mother repeated, almost indignantly. “Is that what you call working their own people to death, strip-mining their own world, building factories instead of farms? I’m - I’m surprised at you, Stephen.”

“What else could they do? Nobody was coming to help them - nobody came for a hundred years. We sat by and made nice with their enslavers while their planet died! I won’t stand by every decision the Kha’Ri ever made, but everything they did was in the name of independence. They needed infrastructure - they needed trade. And somehow, none of us were so particular about where the goods came from.”

His father took a deep breath, straightening his glasses by habit. “ _We_ never made those decisions, Stephen, you and I. And we can’t make those decisions now, on behalf of Earth or anyone else. I know my place. And you would know yours too, if you put that big brain of yours to work instead of your following your heart on every whim.”

“Funny, because the way I see it, this is about having a spine,” Stephen snapped.

Before his father could try to reach in through the screen and smack him upside the head from another star system, his mother intervened, putting her hand on his shoulder and giving him a knowing look. All of a sudden Stephen was sixteen again, storming out of his parent’s old townhouse after an argument about enlistment had boiled over, with his father hot on his heels and reined in only by his mother’s quiet signal.

“What your father is trying to say is that you can’t take on a burden like this, as if everything depends on you - as if it’s your fault everything is the way it is. And you can’t put that kind of responsibility on anybody else either. You know there’s not a lot your father can do, even if he wanted to.”

“Isn’t it enough to hope that he _does_ want to?” He said irritably. “To hope that I come from people who give a damn? I’ve been doing what I can. Everything I can. Because this matters to me, and I want it to matter to you - both of you - everyone. I don’t know why it doesn’t. I really don’t.” He rubbed at his eyes, knowing he was coming out inarticulate, but he was exhausted, so exhausted by trying to make people care, so exhausted by looking for answers and being told no, no, no.

“Why is it you’re always so invested in other people’s battles, Stephen?” When he looked up again, he found his father… not angry, Stephen realized. Disappointed. Well, that was a runner-up for most anticipated reaction. Still, it stung, in a way that his father’s fury never seemed to touch him. “Why is it you call home for the first time in a year - or more? To try to get me to intervene in a war on the other side of the galaxy?”

“Because it’s important! Because people are dying by the thousands - by the millions, and I care about that, goddamn it, and I don’t know why you don’t! And you- you’re General Franklin, for chrissake, you can bend the ear of people who could do something about it. You could make a difference, a real difference! You might be able to save a planet from enslavement and instead you’re sitting there trying to berate me for being a bad son? Well, fine, I’m a bad son, a worse soldier. But I’m not a bad person.”

“We never said that you were a bad son-” his mother shook her head sadly as she spoke. “I just wish you would see that we’re not bad people either. Just because we don’t take up the same causes as you, that doesn’t mean we don’t care!”

“Then do something! Please, somebody just needs to - to do something,” he said, failing to keep the hoarse desperation from his voice. “Everybody in the damned galaxy can say ‘it wasn’t me,’ and all of them might be right. But the responsibility has to go somewhere. All I’m asking is for you to try, now, before it’s too late, before we become bystanders to genocide again. Even if you don’t care about the Narns, don’t you care about what that says about us? Appeal to Earthforce, whoever in Earth Alliance will listen, if the opportunity presents itself - and if it doesn’t, make it! Dad, please, you can do so much more than I can. Please. Just try.”

His parents shared a look. He knew it, from the times he pleaded his case against Earthforce Academy as a teen, the times in university he tried to challenge his parents on politics over the dinner table. It always ended like this, with a shared look that said, _how do we make him stop?_ It did not say, _is he right?_

“I’ll try, Stephen.” His father sat back in the chair, hands folded in his lap.

It was the barest of concessions, the emptiest of promises. And it was as much as he could have hoped for - as much of a favour as General Richard Franklin could ever lend. What had he expected? To convert his father into a sympathizer? To turn the tide of Earthforce’s chauvinism with a single call home? It was so little, so late.

He was dizzy with adrenaline, exhaustion, anger, defeat, all brewing behind his eyes in a desperate storm. He grit his teeth to keep it all in, taking a slow, steady breath.

“Alright. I should probably go.”

“Stephen, wait…” his mother reached out toward the screen. She opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. She sighed, looking at him intently in the screen. “Call again sometime, will you? I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine. I’ll call. Goodnight, Mom. Dad.” Before either of them could get in another word, he cut the transmission. Childish, he knew, a tactic he had not employed since first year university. But he couldn’t keep it up any more.

As the screen flicked back to blankness, Stephen slumped forward with his head in his hands. He pressed his palms against his eyelids until it started to hurt, thinking over and over to himself, what now? What now? It wasn't the end of the world again - not his world, at least. But it felt like that, like being enveloped in a shadow whose enormity reached to every horizon. Like waiting for the last grains of sand to run out of a glass.

He thought, for a moment, about praying. He struggled to think of how to even start, trying and failing to remember the passages he once knew by rote. He tried to let his mind produce something in spontaneity, and found himself empty of words. If this were a dialogue, it was one he had not practiced for years, and it held all the strange awkwardness of greeting a long-former friend and searching for conversation. He wondered instead if G'Kar was praying, and if he were, what he was saying. Was he promising himself to greater forces? Was he demanding an answer? Was he begging?

Soon enough, Stephen sat back and reminded himself why he didn’t pray at all. He was not one to ask, he was one to answer. He was supposed to be the one who worked, who made miracles when prayers weren’t enough. He opened his topmost desk drawer - there, beside a messy pile of unsorted data crystals, his stims. He pocketed two and headed for the door, his feet leading the well trodden path to Brown 74.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best OCs are characters that are technically named but never described except in the vaguest passing. So thank you JMS for Stephen's three* very cool very gay sisters!
> 
> (*the wiki lists 'Juanita' as a fourth sister, but based on the convo in which she is mentioned I'm pretty sure Juanita is his mom)


	5. [MARK AS READ]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Narn-Centauri War ends.

**TO** : CAPTAIN JOHN J. SHERIDAN // BABYLON 5 // CC-01  
**SUBJ** : WRT. NARN ISSUE

Captain John J. Sheridan,  
The following notice is served in accordance with Earthforce Code of Conduct Section 1.12 “Disorderly and Disobedient Conduct”

Earthforce Command is informed of the situation ongoing with regards to the Narn Homeworld, as well as your recent communications with Captains L. Jozic, B. Cheung, and C. Schols, and Generals W. Hague and J. Smits. You are hereby ordered to cease any further petition to action against the existent policy of Earthgov.

Effective immediately, any such communication will be considered insubordination in your duty as a captain of Earthforce and acted upon accordingly as per Earthforce Code of Conduct Section 1.12.3. Any further attempts to reach fellow or superior officers of Earthforce, civilian officers of Earthgov, members of Political Office, as well as ISN or other public press, et cetera, on the subject of the Narn issue in an effort to steer action against order will be noted as acts of willful noncompliance. You are to await further instruction before proceeding in any diplomatic capacity.

No subsequent warning will be issued.

Earthforce Disciplinary Office

—

 **TO** : EARTHFORCE DISCIPLINARY OFFICE // EARTHDOME SECTOR 5 x 1C  
**SUBJ** : RE: WRT. NARN ISSUE

[DRAFT]  
take your warning and

—

 **TO** : KHA’RI’AKAR(‘3) G’KAR // BABYLON 5 // GREEN 4-J  
**SUBJ** : WAIT

One more call coming in - a few minutes at most once we get a window. Not sure what they’ll tell you but G’Kret says it will count. We’re almost glad you’re not here. (Still wish you were.)

Kha’Ri’Akar(‘5) G’Slon

—

 **TO** : DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // BABYLON 5 // MEDLAB 1  
**SUBJ** : [MESSAGE NOT RECEIVED]

This is an automatically generated message. Do not reply.

Communiqué to ‘GENERAL RICHARD FRANKLIN’ dated NOVEMBER 23 2259, 07h19 EDST was not received.

Please correct routing information or, if routing information is verified, contact the following personnel for more detail on the nature of the error:  
EAS SCHWARZKOPF  
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: ENSIGN SUAREZ, G.  
ROUTING #EAS1032-09

—

 **TO** : CWO. MICHAEL GARIBALDI // SECURITY RED 3  
**SUBJ** : COUNCIL MEETING TODAY

Thanks for earlier. Don’t want to start annoying him but I’m not sure about leaving G’Kar unattended for the next few. Mollari too. Who knows.

Double duty on council chamber from 16h00 on, both inside and out. Don’t know what Mollari is going to pull but can’t imagine anyone will be happy about it. Would like to keep everyone alive if possible. Casualties to a minimum if not. Extra eye on League ambassadors would be appreciated too. Everyone’s jittery.

Captain John Sheridan  
Station Commander, Babylon 5

—

 **TO** : DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // MEDLAB 1  
**SUBJ** : RE: [ ]

No, I will be available for station matters in the meantime (not physically, I am waiting for private transmissions in quarters). He will be in the council chamber + otherwise occupied until 18h00 or later. Don’t recommend approaching. Serious.

Not the praying type either. Will advise, thanks, etc.

Akar’ya(‘3) Na’Toth  
Narn Diplomatic Attaché

—

 **TO** : KHA’RI’AKAR(‘3) G’KAR // GREEN 4-J  
**SUBJ** : DOC AS PER EARLIER

Attached is the formal statement, signed, sealed, witnessed (Delenn). Nothing Earthgov or the Centaurum can do about it now.

I couldn’t find the words earlier, and maybe I still won’t. But G’Kar, I appreciate what it means for you to ask for my help. I swear we will keep you safe here. See you in the council chamber.

JS

—

 **TO** : [ENTER RECIPIENT]  
**SUBJ** : [ENTER MESSAGE SUBJECT]

[DRAFT]  
I should want many things, important and impossible. But all I can seem to want now is to see the sky as we knew it, under the korak trees on the hill. I want to go back, to see the sun and the stars, unobstructed by the shadow of drones and warships. I want to feel our glorious hope, breathing as free people for the very first time. Do you remember how the so’alor fruited early that year and all of G’Khamazad seemed drunk with its sweetness? Do you remember feeling awed by the openness of the world, when we first allowed ourselves to look about, to lay in the fields, to learn to walk slowly and unguarded?

It was good, to be young in those days. But now, I think that I would have liked even more to be old then. To have fought long and hard for a legacy that ended in blinding brightness and sweetness. To have my last breath be one of the clear incense of korak on a summer night.

—

 **TO** : DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // MEDLAB 1  
**SUBJ** : RE: COUNCIL

Sorry, I only know as much as you do. Maybe less, all things considered.

Capt has been running around all day. G’Kar was in earlier, then Mollari called all hands to council. They just started the session - if anyone starts a fire or pulls a knife you’ll be the first to hear it. Keep your head down, and an ear out. You know how it goes.

Commander Susan Ivanova  
Executive Officer, Babylon 5

—

 **TO** : CENTAURI ATTACHÉ VIR COTTO // GREEN 2-J  
**SUBJ** : RE: [ ]

Never attempt to contact me again.

Akar’ya(‘3) Na’Toth  
Narn Diplomatic Attaché

—

 **TO** : [ADVISORY COUNCIL OF BABYLON 5]  
**SUBJ** : TERMS OF AGREEMENT

Greetings Ambassadors,

Attached to this message are the formal terms of the agreement reached between the Centauri Republic and the former Narn Regime for your perusal. In addition to the remarks made before the Council today are several minor points of clarity that require your attention as noted within the document. The Republic gladly accepts your acknowledgement of these terms and your commitment to maintaining clear and civil relationships with the Republic and its protectorate colonies including the newly reclaimed Ilonceri II (‘Narn Homeworld’).

We wish to emphasize that any dealings of diplomacy or trade with the former Narn Regime are now to be conducted solely through the Republic. Interim representatives of the new protectorate have been assigned, and their contact information may be found in the second document attached. Any questions that arise during this transitional phase may be directed toward the persons listed according to subject area. With your cooperation, we shall continue our fruitful relations with a minimum of disruption.

Yours in service,  
Aconlaro-Firmos Ambassador Londo Mollari of the Centauri Court

—

 **TO** : DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // MEDLAB 1  
**SUBJ** : CLINIC

[SECURED, MED COM 2]  
Before you ask: already on it. Couple of the Narn orderlies volunteered to double as security and bring in extra hands to watch the door. Kinda freaking me out but all ok down here. Any idea how this is going to shake out? Extradition? If Capt is turning this place into a safe haven we might get real swamped real soon.

Dr. Amira Khoury  
Attending Xenobiologist, Babylon 5

—

 **TO** : CAPT. JOHN SHERIDAN // CC-01  
**SUBJ** : RE: IS HE THERE?

Yes. Resting. Must discuss first. Will advise.

Akar’ya(‘3) Na’Toth  
Narn Diplomatic Attaché

—

 **TO** : ACONLARO-FIRMOS MOLLARI, LONDO // BABYLON 5 // GREEN 2-F  
**SUBJ** : TERMS OF SURRENDER

We have reviewed the transcript: fine delivery albiet weak followup. You should not have allowed the Narn the last word. It gives him too much an appearance of dignity. His situation will be monitored.

We will review the matter of Babylon 5 offering ‘sanctuary’ and expect cooperation ongoing from Earthgov in this regard. The Captain Sheridan is only one man. Continue with updates as before regardless of the Narn’s status, and please to connect again with your agent - the especial thanks of the Court and the Centaurum await.

Glory to the Republic,  
Legatori Farilo, Kina (TN, MLR)

—

 **TO** : CITIZEN G’KAR // GREEN 4-J  
**SUBJ** : [ ]

I don’t know what to say. But you know where to find me.

-SF.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to avoid rewriting existing scenes of the show, but for the sake of plot flow I feel like major events still have to be addressed directly. I think this is a fun way to do it?
> 
> And yes, Na'Toth is still here! She will be for a while.


	6. SIGNAL REFLECTION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the G'Tok is in Bablyon 5 space, G'Kar and Na'Toth speak with its captain.

The transmission from the _G'Tok_ was sent only from the other side of Epsilon III, where the warship lay in hiding. Over such short distance, it should have been a clear channel, but for the military-standard thrice-encoding, which, for reasons G’Kar was unclear on, always made the signal crackle in a particular way. He and Na’Toth stood side by side and squinted at War Leader Na’Kal in the display on the wall, his image somewhat dark and distorted in erratic streaks.

As the image focused slightly, G’Kar cleared his throat (when exactly had he absorbed that little mannerism?) and continued, “-I was only saying, I hope that the supplies have been sufficient. I’ve tried to impress upon Captain Sheridan the importance of this matter.”

“Quite sufficient, Kha’Ri’Akar, thank you. What we lack in most part is numbers, I’m afraid. I remain hindered by my lack of peer - captaining alone is a peculiar affair, but the committee is handling it as best they can. Still, our repairs are going slowly and I remain wary so long as our jump engines are offline."

G’Kar nodded solemnly, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Sheridan is a man of his word. Sometimes, in times like this, it is the right word. I would expect nothing less than Babylon 5’s full force, should trouble arise while you are under his protection.”

“I have a final roster of the volunteers for your perusal - they will come aboard on the final supply ship with your approval,” Na’Toth added. “Two more of the Narn orderlies from the clinic here have elected to join, as well as another Human engineer from the docker’s guild. We cannot vouch for this one in particular but she… does not lack enthusiasm.”

Na’Kal bowed his head curtly. “I thank you for your help in recruitment. We will return your doctor in turn.”

“Our doctor?”

“Dr. Franklin, of course.”

G’Kar shared a look with Na’Toth, who pleaded ignorance by flattening her hands out in front of her. “We were not aware he had come aboard,” G’Kar said.

“He arrived yesterday with the Narn medics you instructed,” Na’Kal said, politely puzzled. “We assumed you requested his assistance.”

“He has a tendency to offer it without being asked,” Na’Toth sighed.

“I see. Well, his expertise has been appreciated here.”

“As it has been here,” G’Kar smiled, with a strange tinge of pride. “Might we all be so assured of duty as he.”

“Indeed.” Na’Kal paused thoughtfully. “I admit it… is difficult. I try to feel emboldened by the thought of you, and other survivors, still living outside Homeworld and the colonies. Still free.”

G’Kar stiffened. Free. In what universe was this freedom?

“Yours is the emboldening story, Na’Kal,” he said, levelly. “The inspiration that seeing the _G’Tok_ brought us, I simply cannot overstate.” Even through the crackling image, Na’Kal’s unimpressed expression was plain. “You were on the First Continent during the occupation, yes?”

The lean Narn blinked slowly in affirmation, distorted shadows cast across his long features. “My brood worked the mines in G’Loreth. Arc 6.”

“Then you remember the first Sentri we shot down over G’Khamazad?”

“I was young. I remember hearing the news. The seventh day of Ya’Itel.”

G’Kar closed his eyes a moment, inhaling deeply as though he could conjure the heady smell of burning fuel, the wrenching screech of Centauri metal as it twisted itself apart, hurtling at the earth in brilliant fire that was seen for miles around. “I say with all honesty that the news of your arrival at Babylon 5 rivalled the triumph of that morning. It is the first good news we have had in such a long time.” He spread his arms effusively, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Na’Toth roll her shoulders back in derision.

Na’Kal grimaced, the edges of his mouth disappearing into a patch of signal interference. “I hope that I can bring more, Kha’Ri’Akar, but we have been running with no quarter, no rest, with our people weak and our weapons empty. Now that the war has ended, we need-”

“It has not ended!” G’Kar snapped.

In that humming pause - as close as a space station ever got to silence - G’Kar wished, ungratefully, that the captain he faced was a different one. One old enough to have lived through the liberation and understood it truly, instead of a whelp who believed losing Homeworld meant losing his soul.

He stared hard at Na’Kal. “Did we lose the war when they landed their Sentris a century ago? When they burned the first library, or the last? When they executed the Council? When they planted their flag in the G’Khamazad tower? No, that war never ended, until we killed the last Centauri in Narn space. And while there are yet two Narns left breathing, _this_ war will not have ended. Until they strip us of our teeth and our claws and our minds, we will not have lost our weapons.”

Na’Kal looked blankly at a spot off screen - a status report, perhaps, or perhaps he simply stared out his viewscreen at the shadowy side of Epsilon III. When he spoke, his eyes stayed unfocused, addressing a place behind the camera. “There is no movement to join in. No command to obey. Just- ourselves, survival more urgent than strategy.”

G’Kar let out a small sigh. Na’Kal and Na’Toth were of similar age, part of the small generation born in the last years of the occupation. The victory of liberation was only a childhood memory to them. They knew it had been hard-earned, certainly, but they held all the righteousness, the closure, with no sense of scale. When Na’Kal had taken up arms, he joined the fleet and moved up the ranks. When G’Kar had taken up arms, he joined other children, little more than pouchlings, under the rattling roofs of the shantytown outside G’Khamazad.

“Do you think it always felt possible to win - not just simple, but possible at all? When whole broods disappeared each night, and we treaded around the mines in our streets each morning? Sometimes we fought only because it seemed better to die a rebel than a slave. You must not fight as you did with the assurances of the whole fleet at your back, but as we did then, our minds honed sharp with sheer desperation.

“You may only have one battleship, Na’Kal, but that is one more than we had for most of the Occupation. You may not storm Homeworld and win our freedom in one fell swoop, but you will pave the way for the day that we do so. Your advantage may be less than you are accustomed to, but more than we had then.”

Na’Kal considered this carefully, his image distorting and cracking into shards as he sat, unmoving. Eventually his face shifted into a bitter, reminiscent smile. “Before this - before any of this, I was aboard an old Frazi on the border. Patrols around Quadrant 14 and 17. I think of how simple the work was, then, how clearly right and routine.

“And I think of how I could have died there when the Centauri came to destroy G’Kholek, if I had not been promoted to the _G’Tok_ a month earlier. I think of how I could have died at Gorash 7 with the rest of the fleet, if the signal buoy in our quadrant had not been destroyed and we had not missed the rally call. I think of how I could have died at Homeworld, if War Leader Du’Lrek had not spent the last moments of her life telling us to stay away. All these other deaths have paved the way for my life, my crew’s-” he stopped short, his momentum falling away.

“And,” G’Kar led.

“And I am afraid. I have never been afraid to die, nor my crew. I welcomed it, if the cause were true. But now… we are the last of our kind,” he said, now staring at G’Kar with hollow eyes. “I fear, more than I fear my own end, the final failure it would bring to our people.”

G’Kar winced. “The _G’Tok_ may be the last of its brood, but it is not the last of our people.” On the screen, Na’Kal blinked slowly, studiously. “You cannot allow yourself to think that we are already defeated. We are simply in an early phase of this new war. Even I fought only the gloried days at the end, when our momentum became unstoppable - when we crashed upon the Centauri as a single wave. But building that force took time. Your duty now is not to win every battle that begins, but simply to give our comrades relief to begin our recuperation. You must strike deftly and surprisingly, not engaging on equal terms but striking where they are weak. Strength was not on our side in the beginning, and it is not on our side now - but studying our histories will lay out the path ahead. We have won, Na’Kal. We will win again.”

Na’Kal absorbed all this quietly, and G’Kar thought of all the fighters he had served under, those who could be called War Leaders as much in title as in spirit. In days when being a Narn meant being a soldier by default, he had looked to them as though they called down truths from the heavens. He had never hoped to succeed them, yet here he stood, dispensing advice to the captain of the last heavy cruiser in the fleet. It was a strange feeling. One he did not especially care for.

Finally, Na'Kal said, “I hope I live to see it. But I accept that I may only guide its beginnings.” He paused, as though remembering something. “You are keeping a record, Kha’Ri’Akar?”

A record. Yes, he should be. As Akar it was part of his duty, more important than ever, now that he was the last. But every time he tried to conjure the words into permanence lately he had found himself incapable. Na’Toth had been keeping up in his stead, but only with the barest of fact, leaving the eventual commentary to him.

“Yes,” he answered plainly.

“Hm. Perhaps you need not write that I was afraid.”

G’Kar bowed his head deeply, in deference to their mutual fate. “I could not write of your fear and omit my own. This struggle may claim us both. It may take another century. That knowledge is hard to bear. But for now, your place in this war is not yet found, your path not yet ended.”

—

The very second the transmission ended, he felt Na’Toth’s eyes move to him, piercing like daggers. He turned to her, and before he could so much as open his mouth she spoke. “When will you learn?”

He exhaled, too tired to match her combativeness. “Learn what?”

“That you can’t simply expect everyone to believe what you believe. That you can’t send them- him-” she gestured widely at the viewscreen, and the door. “-into battle and tell them everything will work itself out.”

“It will not _work itself out_ ,” he sighed, pacing around the room. “I have never said that. Nor believed it.”

“You seem to believe that we will win.”

She followed as he circled the room, touching each of his candles in order, by habit. First the one on his desk for G’Khamazad, then the row neatly laid out on his shelf that represented the northern mountain range of First Continent. He walked toward the bedroom as he spoke. “We _will_ win.”

Her face creased with scorn as she watched him tap his claws against the candles that lined either side of his bed - the ocean Galhadaz on one side, Nharolok on the other. “How can you know?”

“Because it is written. Because to know otherwise is to give in to despair. But we will also win because the Centauri are only creatures, like us, mutable and understandable and _defeatable_ , and to see them otherwise is to give them too much power. Victory will be hard-won, but it will be won. Every Narn knows the price-”

“Of course they know!” she snarled. “They know the price and nothing else! You speak as though God will descend from the stars and hand us the Centauri on a platter, that we simply have to wait, and be brave, and be good, and justice will be served, but meanwhile all we have seen is defeat, death, sacrifice - all for a few short years of freedom only to find ourselves crushed again.”

“We have seen victory too, liberation-” he groaned, throwing his hands in the air. He gave up his tour of the metaphorical landmarks and instead paced back toward his desk. “You are too young, Na’Kal is too young; you know that we won but you don’t understand the way we won. We won by our belief, our tirelessness-”

“And what happens when we run out of those?” She stormed toward where G’Kar stood, stopping just short of laying hands on him. “Na’Kal has been bleeding crew for months, running for his life and losing every battle. And now he has no home, no sureness, no support at all-” the pleading hoarseness of her voice clearly more than simple sympathy, “-and you simply tell him to walk his path as though it is a matter of reading starmaps and following rules written out.”

“That is not what is meant.” He spoke with carefully considered calm. “G’Quan wrote that one soul walking does not leave a trail. Only the treading of a hundred feet or more will make a path - I do not send Na’Kal off to meet his fate alone, but to find it in his comrades.”

“ _What_ comrades? Look around. We are scattered. What ships remain will be little more than target practice for the Centauri. Our people on Homeworld - perhaps they can band together in time, but perhaps the Centauri will have learned from their past defeat. Perhaps their eagerness to punish us for our defiance will break our backs this time. You always say to understand victory is to understand the enemy. Do you understand that they are angry this time? That they believe they have as much claim to vengeance as we?”

Of course he wondered if it would be different this time. He had scoured the scant records of the first occupation for some glimmer of reflection that yes, their predecessors had been afraid too - some hope that despair could precede victory. What had it been like the first time, to watch the warships descend on Homeworld without a century of struggle already behind them? He tried to believe that they were better off now with the experience under their feet, the blood on their tongues.

“What purpose is served in entertaining thoughts like this? What hope is there if you believe the enemy to have won before you begin the battle?”

“None of us are unwilling. We have been battling our whole lives. But we are so _tired_ , G’Kar-” he blinked in surprise at the familiar use of his name. Then again, his title was not truly his anymore. Na’Toth raised her eyes to look at him, with a bleak sort of wonderment. “Perhaps you can never understand how it feels to us. You are a believer, and that makes you indefatigable. You believe that we are walking a path, a righteous path that will lead us to a righteous place.”

“And what do you believe? That we are adrift in the cold, waiting to die?”

“I don’t believe anything other than what I see. And what I see is- is all our fleet gone, all our worlds gone, all our work, that precious damned _work_ we all did, all gone. And I see you, placating with your words, telling our people that all this suffering has purpose. You tell them to find their places, as though any of this could be considered right, and just. You tell yourself that _this_ is your place." She gave him a firm shove and threw her hands wide at the floor with contempt. “This station, this isolation, _this_ is the place you think you have to serve. At the feet of aliens who care so little for justice that they would banish you from their council at the word of our enslavers! You hang your hope upon these people and ask us to believe that all is right in the galaxy!”

“Nothing is right in this place,” he spat back, matching her shove with one of his own. “But it is as the Kha’Ri decided, and therefore it is as I must do.”

“You could do so much more if you did not impose these rules upon yourself.” She struck him again, thumping the back of her hand against his chest to punctuate her disdain.

“I am Kha’Ri’Akar! I am the last!” he roared, grabbing her by the wrist and flinging her hand away. She did not retreat. “If I do not obey, my failure will be the legacy of my generation. What would I be, without even the integrity to stand by the last order of the Kha’Ri?”

“There is no Kha’Ri anymore,” she said, in a tone that verged on pitying.

“There will be again. And when there is, my work will be held accountable, and I will not be found a traitor.”

“No one would call you a traitor if you left to lead our people. You could give Na’Kal and the others a real reason to believe, instead of sending them off with platitudes. You are hiding here, behind the aliens, behind your own words - you will not even strike me like a Narn! You are forgetting who you are. Where you come from. There are Narns with whom we could take up arms again. If you must answer to someone, answer to them, rather than eight Circles of ghosts!”

“I forget nothing! The Kha’Ri made a decision,” he declared, with finality. “It was not made lightly, and I will not take it lightly. They decided it important that our voice in the galaxy remained, that we not allow ourselves to be forgotten. I am here to never allow the Earthers or the Minbari to forget how they watched this happen to us.”

Na’Toth scoffed. “They did nothing the first time. They stood by as the Centauri made war on us again. They were not moved into action when they witnessed the Centauri using weapons illegal by their own definition. What makes you think guilt will stir them after we are tamed underfoot? You waste your time here!”

“Would you have me waste it elsewhere? If things are as you say, Na’Toth, and all we have to feed our people are crumbs of despair in the last hour of our civilization, where would you have me die instead that would satisfy you? I am no general. I will never be the hand that leads our people through the slow building of warfare.”

“You fought! And you never let anyone forget it. You were there.”

“I was a child. I followed the path laid out before me by our fighters who knew better, saw further, and they led me to my small place in liberation. And now, I have followed my path here, and yes,” he hissed, “The work here is more wretched than any I have known. Is that what you want to hear? That I hate this place? That I so _regret_ that standing in my shadow has not brought you any glory?”

She bristled at the accusation, and rightfully so. She had stayed at his side, without hesitation. Despite all her protests to the contrary, she was a believer (although, G’Kar thought, she might say that since he was no greater power, she could not be accused of faithfulness). Her only fault as Akar’Ya had been, perhaps, to cast his reflection back at him more strongly than he would have liked. She saw through, to the parts of him desperate and feral. She saw him yearning as much for victory as for the final closure of returning every last drop of blood to the place that had given it all to him.

She let the barb aside, obvious enough in its falsehood that it did not require reprimand. Instead, G’Kar watched as she stepped close, offering her fist to his chest dully.

“There, whether they are fighting, organizing, winning, losing, I do not know. I know only that I see you, and that instead of there, dead or alive, I am here. With you,” she said, with a lifelessness that stabbed into G’Kar much deeper than if she had the strength to scream the same words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw democratic centralism


	7. TOOTH FOR TOOTH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen returns from the G'Tok.

“Jesus _Christ_ , that was close!” The pilot of Shuttle 2 shrieked over the comm as the acceleration slammed Stephen sideways in the mostly-empty passenger cabin. “We’re clear, we’re clear, just- hang on to your butts a sec-”

Gritting his teeth, Stephen gripped the straps holding him into his seat. He tried to prepare himself for the sickening lurch back from multiple G’s to near weightlessness as Sergeant Burch smoothed their course toward Babylon 5. The shuttle yawed portward, though without windows or viewscreens, Stephen was hard pressed to mentally orient himself anywhere in the space between the station and Epsilon III. He managed to keep his lunch down as they slowed, but looking across the narrow aisle at the young orderly Ry’Lok, he worried as much for her constitution as what might happen to his clothes if they came into contact with a Narn’s rather formidable stomach acid.

Ry’Lok didn’t speak English especially well, and Stephen wasn’t confident in his G’Kham-et, but he knew a little of Narn’s informal gestural language. _You alright?_ he signed, pointing at her and then drawing a small circle with two fingertips. She pinched her claws together close to her forehead. _Close enough_ , essentially.

Stephen felt himself growing light under the straps again as the ship leveled, and he reached for the comm panel next to him. “How’s it looking out there?”

“They don’t have eyes on us anymore, that’s for damn sure. The _G’Tok_ just made it to the gate. About half of Zeta Squadron went with.” Stephen shared a look with Ry’Lok, who smiled grimly through her queasiness and nodded.

“Oh, fuck! My god-” the pilot cried suddenly.

“Burch? What is it?” Stephen craned his neck uselessly, trying to peer through the slot in the door that separated the cabin from the cockpit.

“The Centauri - christ, the Centauri cruiser, it’s going up-” Stephen looked back at Ry’Lok, whose expression did not shift as she listened intently. “Shit, it’s venting- it’s lost an engine or something starboard-side- god, it’s totally blown to hell...” Burch’s voice trailed off in amazement, and Stephen was left to imagine the sight of a Primus cruiser breaking apart silently in the vacuum of space.

After a minute of silence, a crackle on the comm preceded a deep sigh from Burch. “Didn’t expect it to end like this, that’s for damn sure,” they said softly. “Just thought they’d spook ‘em off. Jeeee-zus.” Stephen looked over to find that Ry’Lok had closed her eyes and bowed her head meditatively.

“We’re just about to get - er- hang on-” A rapid series of beeps signaled their approach to the station, and Burch’s voice went tinny and quiet as they leaned over to a different panel to report in. “Yeah, yeah, Shuttle 2 to Docking Bay 8, let us the hell in please, Lex, and next time you can send Antoine to pick up our precious Doc from the middle of a fucking firefight - no offense, Doc,” they added, back in the direction of the comm mic.

“None taken,” Stephen sighed, leaning back in his seat as they waited for clearance. He took a stim to clear his head as the adrenaline began to ebb away.

He was not thinking about the near-miss they’d had - a blast from the Centauri laser cannon that had come close enough to, as Burch described it, “shave the blue off a Minbari.” Instead, he was trying to absorb the fact that Sheridan had just destroyed a Centauri battle cruiser in Babylon 5 space.

It had all happened in the span of minutes - he had been in the _G’Tok_ ’s modest sickbay discussing followup plans for a Narn with a broken leg when the ship plunged into emergency alert. Startled, Stephen had frozen in place as the walls and floor thrummed unnervingly with what served in place of a klaxon on a Narn vessel: an urgent, thunderous drumbeat that whipped the crew around him into immediate action, securing loose equipment, readying emergency stations, clearing patients from the centre of the room. Ry’Lok found him in the commotion and moved him bodily to the docking bay, abandoning a crate or two of medical supplies as well as his daypack in the cot he had been assigned, two decks below sickbay.

Zeta Squadron was already assuming position around the _G’Tok_ when Shuttle 2 arrived, with Sergeant Burch frantically waving them aboard. They had barely left the bay when the action started, Burch cursing and weaving around to avoid Zeta Squad’s maneouvres as they broke to attack the Centauri.

Sheridan probably hadn’t meant to destroy the cruiser, hadn’t ordered it - more likely that somebody scored a lucky strike on something volatile, or that the Centauri had escalated to an extent that Sheridan’s hand was forced. But still, the _G’Tok_ had made it out, at the cost of a Primus battle cruiser, and Stephen found himself fighting the urge to laugh with nervous energy. He was still giddy with the thought when he and Ry’Lok stepped out into Docking Bay 8, only to be accosted from across the yard-

“Stephen Franklin, you complete, absolute, incorrigible little brat-!”

He winced, waving Ry’Lok off down the hall to safety as he awaited his scolding. _Good luck,_ she signed, or something to that effect, before heading to the civilian clearance gate.

“You know I am older than you,” he quipped, leaning on the railing as Susan stormed down the stairs toward him.

“Old enough to know better, too. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Just doing my job,” he answered, avoiding her gaze as they headed toward the service elevator, bypassing the passenger lounge.

“Your job is not to sneak off the station whenever you damn well please.”

“Actually, as a medical officer, Earthforce general order forty-s-”

“Don’t _actually_ me! You could have been killed! If we hadn’t scrambled Shuttle 2 in time, you could still be out there on the _G’Tok_ , going god knows where for god knows how long-” She narrowed her eyes. “But you know, I almost think you’d prefer that.”

“I’d have caught a ride back on a Starfury. Economy class, you know.”

“Oh, sure, that easy,” she sighed, as they arrived at the elevator and waited. “I know your heart bleeds enough to flood the station, but why can’t you just _tell_ someone you’re doing a little overnight trip to a Narn battlecruiser?”

“Told everyone in Medlab. And I told you when I needed a ride back,” he shrugged.

She scowled, and Stephen thought about how, growing up, he’d seen more or less that exact expression on all three of his sisters’ faces. “I know I technically can’t get you court-martialled, but honest to God, some days you make me want to find a way.”

“Get in line,” he laughed, stepping in as the elevator door slid open. “Blue 3.”

“Belay that. C&C Admin Deck.” She pinged the elevator with her Link for authorization. Stephen raised his eyebrows as the lights tinged blue and the elevator shifted into motion. “You’re coming for a debrief,” she said, in a way that did not invite argument.

“Should I be worried?”

“Your ass is, for the time being, not on the line. Lantz and Welles want to hear what happened.” She looked at him sidelong. “I’d… keep it brief with them.”

“The guys from Earth?”

“Ministry of Peace,” she smiled bitterly. “They’re here to sign a non-aggression treaty with the Centauri. All that ‘interviewing’ they did with the League ambassadors... God, I know we should have known better but we were really hoping-” Susan turned, and she sighed at Stephen’s expression. “I know. Look, I thought better you hear it from me than blow up in their faces, because they-”

“A fucking non-aggression treaty! They’re gearing up for a full blown military alliance so we can’t do jack shit while they’re busy going around-”

“I know! Stephen, damn it, I know,” she said, exasperated. “Sheridan and I. We know, alright? We’re the ones dealing with the Drazi and the Pak’ma’ra, and Earthgov shills and Mollari on top of it all, with our hands tied tighter than a frog’s ass. And Sheridan’s up to his ears, because, I dunno if you noticed or not, but he just blew up a Primus in B5 space.”

Stephen shifted back on his heels, reining himself in. He chewed on the thought for a moment. “How’d it go down? I didn’t see most of the action.”

“They fired first, then wouldn’t back off,” she said matter-of-factly. “And Zeta Squad’s training seemed to pay off better than expected.”

“You don’t sound too put off by it.”

“We were doing our jobs. I don’t like destroying ships and killing people,” she said stiffly. “But they wanted to tangle with us, as much as they wanted to take the _G’Tok_ while she was under our protection. One or the other would’ve been enough, but they had to make it both. So.” She rolled her shoulders back and straightened her uniform decisively, and the elevator doors slid open.

Stephen followed her down the hall to the captain’s office. Inside, Sheridan was pacing in small steps behind his desk, arms behind his back, with his expression set in a cold, teeth-grinding fury. Across the room on the sofas were two men who looked like they came direct from the Earthgov bureaucrat factory.

The older of the two stood and made his introduction to Stephen directly. “Dr. Franklin, I presume,” he said, shaking Stephen’s hand with practiced efficiency. “Frederick Lantz, Ministry of Peace. And Mr. Welles, co-director of Nightwatch,” he gestured with an open hand to the younger man, who simply nodded. “We understand you were just aboard the Narn vessel,” Lantz continued, motioning them toward the couches.

Stephen and Susan remained standing next to the seats. “The _G’Tok_ , yes.”

“And? We watched them make their escape, with the help of Babylon 5 forces-” this, directed to Sheridan dryly. “What do you think their odds are, out there on the run?” Lantz spoke conversationally as he seated himself on the couch.

Stephen stiffened. “Better.”

“Better? Than before the destruction of the Centauri cruiser, you mean? No need to be reticent, doctor. We’re not about to make trouble for a man on a mission of mercy.”

“You have no reservations making trouble for the people I’m trying to help.”

Lantz sighed with disappointment.“I see you’re of the same mind as your Captain here.” Stephen looked at Sheridan, quietly amused by the comparison. Sheridan did not seem to appreciate the humour in it, his distaste radiating off him in waves. What had they pressed him into, Stephen wondered.

Lantz continued, in a lecturing tenor. “The non-aggression treaty is in the best interest of all Humans in Earth Alliance; that cannot be denied. And that includes those who live and work here, on your station. In fact, we’ve spoken with many aboard who seem to understand that, among the civilian population as well as your colleagues. Yet you,” he said, looking pointedly at Sheridan, Stephen, and Susan in turn. “-seem to lack perspective in this regard.”

“We lack a lot of things, but not perspective.” Stephen tried to speak coolly. “Working with other species gives us a better perspective on the fact that the Centauri are out for blood.”

“Ah. And these other species, were our positions reversed, would they be coming to our rescue? Harbouring our refugees, sending their brilliant xenobiologists to our stranded warships? Or would it be very much like the Minbari War, when we found ourselves alone to the very end.” Lantz leaned back comfortably in the chair, gesturing with both hands laced together. “You may find it distasteful. You may find it callous. But we are acting in the best interest of the people closest to ourselves, because we have seen before, and we shall see again: nobody else will do it.”

“This isn’t the same-” Stephen began, flustered as his blood boiled. “And- and even if it were, is that the moral backbone Earthgov has? Save ourselves, damn the rest? There are still billions of Narns on their Homeworld, billions of Drazi and Pak’ma’ra that are next on the chopping block. We might have our safety for now, but at all their expenses!”

“Your reputation rather precedes you, Dr. Franklin,” Welles stood, smiling as he fastened the top button on his jacket, but his delivery was entirely cold. “And I’m pleased to see that reputation is well-earned.” Stephen bristled - sure, he’d heard that Nightwatch had eyes everywhere, but the thought of people from his staff making reports back to someone like Welles made his skin crawl.

Welles considered Stephen with careful dispassion, as though mulling over an opinion on the weather. “We know you’re a sympathetic man, more bound to a personal code than any rule of law. That’s been proved out on multiple occasions even during your brief tenure here, helped, no doubt, by certain lapses in oversight.” His eyes flicked over to the captain’s desk.

“That’s enough!” Sheridan stopped mid pace, and every head in the room turned to him. “My priority is the station, and Dr. Franklin wouldn’t be here if I thought he endangered it. Any issue you have with the way he operates can be taken up with me.”

Stephen stared at his shoes. More likely than anything that Sheridan was just indignant at Earthgov muscling in on his turf, but still, his ears were burning.

“Far from it, Captain,” Lantz said amiably. “Dr. Franklin’s moral dedication is commendable, of course. And the Ministry of Peace isn’t here to start interfering with internal affairs. But what we have been disappointed in is this reckless disregard for safety and security.”

“For whom?” Stephen said. “The only people protected by an alliance with the Centauri are the Centauri.”

“The Centauri wouldn’t be foolish enough to start a war with us. They simply aren’t the brutal conquerors you make them out to be. But even if you did believe that, wouldn’t you rather our forces be squarely where they need to be, guarding Earth Alliance citizens? We can’t all spread ourselves thin saving everyone in the galaxy.”

Lantz straightened his suit jacket as he stood and paced between the chairs, addressing Sheridan. “We simply want to underline that the way you are carrying on here is dangerous, both for Earth, and for yourself. You are rather giving the impression that the rules need not apply to you, nor anyone who holds your esteem. And you are making enemies for yourself and those esteemed colleagues,” he smiled flatly at Stephen. “You may feel independent and self-sufficient, running your little city out in space. But I trust you all to recall, on occasion, that your salaries are signed by Earthgov, under the presumption that you are, in fact, working for us.”

Stephen and Sheridan shared a look, and Stephen was glad to find his contempt for the threat clearly mirrored.

Lantz gestured broadly at all of them. “But- perhaps you find that simple reminder uncouth. Perhaps an appeal to civic duty is more appropriate for company such as this. Perhaps a reminder that you are, in fact, Human, and to ask you to consider Human interests foremost is not asking too much. We have our own injured and damned and vulnerable.”

“And they’re being well taken care of,” Stephen scowled. “We’re doing what we can for those without any help at all.”

“And so nobly,” Welles smiled as he came to stand directly in front of Stephen. “You may be willing to throw yourself into any fire you find convenient, but will you not spare even a thought for the rest of your fellow civilians in Earth Alliance?”

Lantz followed, and stood beside Welles. Perhaps out of defensive instinct, Susan shifted a step closer to Stephen’s side. “I ask you again, doctor: what do you think the odds are for the _G’Tok_? Will they make it a week? A month? Perhaps even two, before they are snapped up? Will it have been worth it to shoot down three-hundred and forty-two Centauri crewmen on the _Millonitos_ , and jeopardize the lives of every Human in the galaxy for those on the _G’Tok_ , for however long they can keep running? Will that have been a fair trade?”

“Will it be fair to let entire species become enslaved just so ours sleeps a little quieter?”

“There is little evidence the Centauri intend to do such a thing,” Lantz sighed dismissively. “They are a major force in an unstable region and acting in the interest of all powers concerned there. That is what we came to evaluate for certain, after all, and we have found everything quite in order. Try not to let your opinion take the place of fact, and leave the politicking to us.”

With that, Lantz and Welles filed out the door. When they were gone, Sheridan sat down heavily behind his desk, and Stephen and Susan crossed the room to him.

“They really want us to know they’ve got eyes around here,” Stephen sighed.

“Just giving the leash a good tug. Ministry of Peace, my ass,” Sheridan grunted, putting his head in his hands.

“What’s the damage?” Susan stood at ease in front of the desk.

“An apology. An apology or my job. They weren’t pulling any punches about threatening to replace me before you got here, too.”

“Public, I assume.”

“As public as possible. Zen garden in an hour. As if we needed more reason for the League Ambassadors to get mad at us. We’re going to get enough heat when the treaty goes public.”

“And rightly so,” Susan sighed. “This whole thing, it makes you wonder if Earthforce really…” she stopped short, looking at Stephen. “I don’t want to give you a chance to say ‘I told you so.’”

“I’ll save it,” Stephen smiled weakly. “Sure I’ve got lots of chances left.”

“I just don’t know why they’d even station us out here if they’re not going to listen to a damn thing we say. If anybody has eyes on what Foreign Affairs should be paying attention to, it’s us! But they’d rather plug their ears and tell themselves it’s all going to work out if we make nice with the bad guys.”

Sheridan shook his head. “They’ll listen. We’ll make damned sure.”

“How?” Stephen said, before he could stop himself. They both looked at him expectantly.  _In for a penny_ , he thought. “ _How_ are you going to make them listen? Two weeks ago when you took lead of the Rangers, you told everyone we were drawing a line against the _parliaments of conquerors_. Nice words. But you can’t even stand up to a couple Earthgov suits and you’re about to apologize to the Centauri for doing your damn job!”

“For god’s sake, Stephen, can’t you learn to see a few shades of gray? It’s more important for me to stay where I can do the best work than to save a bit of face. Wouldn’t you rather me take a hit than have to deal with someone Earthgov decides is ‘reasonable’ enough to replace me?” Stephen bit his tongue, knowing exactly the type of person that meant.

“Look,” Sheridan continued. “Delenn’s promised more help from the Minbari, and with the Rangers on top of that, we don’t have to rely on Earthforce for arms or crew. Allying with the Vorlons and Minbari is huge, and we’re doing it on our terms. Earth will have to start paying attention once they realize they don’t have us in their hold anymore.”

Stephen crossed his arms. “I hope you’re right, but having Minbari guns on our side isn’t going to paint a pretty picture for Earthgov. And soon - really soon - you’re going to realize you can’t fix a broken system from the inside.”

Sheridan and Susan shared a look, and Stephen could only guess at what it meant. Maybe they agreed with him, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Fair enough. “I should get back to MedLab. Give you some time to practice your speech,” he said, as he turned heel and left, feeling as empty-handed as he’d arrived.

—

TO: DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // MEDLAB 1  
SUBJ: G’TOK

Kha’Ri’Akar(’3) relays his thanks for assistance on _G’Tok_. Prefer you to mention first next time: a few customs to observe for boarding a ship as a visiting worker. (I am sure the crew did not mind. Kha’Ri’Akar(’3) is old fashioned. Can explain later.)

Akar’ya(’3) Na’Toth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dr stephen 'having the moral high ground means shooting your mouth off at a rate that qualifies as machine gunnery' franklin


	8. BLESSING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few drinks are enjoyed. A divine apparition is debated.

G’Kar leaned in, speaking over the surrounding din. “I know what I saw, Na’Toth. G’Lan appeared before my very eyes, and there is nothing you will say that will make me doubt my own sight!”

Na’Toth downed the rest of the glass of Human ale - she had grown rather fond of the darkest, bitterest sort - and sighed into the bottom of the glass before setting it down with a dull thunk. “Every alien in the garden saw something different, something from their world - it could not have been, literally, actually, G’Lan; you understand that don’t you? If it were, everyone there would have seen them as such-”

“Just because we each saw something different does not make any of us wrong!” He gestured widely to the rest of the Zocalo, where people of all species were chattering animatedly. After being gently shooed from the Zen Garden, they had migrated somewhat en masse to confer with others in the Zocalo in wonderment. “We all saw precisely what we saw, and I saw G’Lan. It was as though they spoke directly to my heart. Isn’t it so remarkable, that we all stood shoulder to shoulder in that garden and, for all our differences, all felt ourselves touched, reached by the hand of divine influence-”

Na’Toth gestured down the bar for another drink. “I hate when you get like this.”

G’Kar laughed. “I know. And I hate to think that you live life so joylessly.”

“I am not _joyless_ ,” she hissed, tapping her credit chit against the terminal embedded in the bar before accepting her second pint. “I am merely trying to knock some sense into you, as usual.”

“Do you not wonder what you would have seen, if you had been there? Would it have changed anything for you if you saw what I saw?”

“I would not have seen anything,” she said decisively, taking a long sip from her glass.

“I doubt that very much. Everyone, even the unbelievers, saw something - the same thing, really - a being of radiant light. Perhaps you would not have seen them as G’Lan. Commander Ivanova told me that her vision was without name, but with familiarity so strong that she could not mistake it. She called it an ‘angel’, a messenger like G’Lan. Ambassador Vizak called it Droshalla - and I know him to be a rather... unspiritual sort." G’Kar finished his glass of taree and considered Na’Toth with a smile. “Perhaps you would have seen yourself,” he prodded, and she bared her teeth in reply.

“Perhaps I would have seen the truth. The real explanation for the vision, whatever it was, something not confined to species or, apparently, good sense. It must have been something real.”

“Exactly as I have been saying. It _was_ real. And it _was_ G’Lan. For whatever reason they chose, they saw fit to save Captain Sheridan.”

She made a derisive sound. “It doesn’t even make sense if you think it really was G’Lan - why would they bother with some Human, especially after they allied themselves with the Centauri!”

“Sheridan did not make their treaty, and he kept the _G’Tok_ safe despite it.”

“Only long enough to leave Babylon 5,” she scoffed. “He will have to come out and make his grovelling apology to the Centauri again, even after they tried to kill him.”

“As he proved to Na’Kal, Sheridan has been true to his word. One only wishes that the word were a little stronger,” he admitted with a sigh.

She narrowed her eyes at him over the rim of her glass. “You should not trust them so easily. They do not trust you. You know they have been convening in secret, Sheridan and Delenn and their little crew. And they convene over the Centauri, the Shadows; who knows of these things better than us? Who warned them first?”

“If you never extend good faith, how can you be trusted in turn? We have proved ourselves honest. We wait only for the truth to out in our favour.”

“We shouldn’t have to wait for anything,” she grumbled. “They should be working to earn your counsel.”

“You have my counsel entirely, yet it seems that you do not find it especially compelling,” he teased.

“I try to have faith that someday you will say something worth listening to.”

“Faith, is it? Then I must have started to affect you after all this time.” He glimpsed the smile on her lips before she took another drink. He motioned for a second glass of taree. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that G’Lan would appear here? This place is a powerful nexus of forces, and we stand in such precipitous times.”

“Even in all the old stories, they were the mouth, not the hand of God. They never came down to thwart some… petty assassination attempt. They taught, but they didn’t intervene. They helped inform decision, not make it themself.”

G’Kar leaned in with interest, ignoring his drink for a moment. “Ah, but a word is never impartial - they showed their hand even in the old stories. They offered Ry’Let the location of Idlen-ath’s medicines, rather than teach him how to craft them himself. Ry’Let had to undermine the Idlen-ath Council one way or another to enter the city. But had G’Lan chosen to impart the wisdom of the medicine instead, he would have been able to leave without interfering with the Council, and without tipping the balance in favour of the Galhadazi.”

Na’Toth rubbed at her temples. “It’s a children’s story. About stealing from the corrupt and giving to the poor.”

“It is a story about serving as an agent to greater purpose.”

“But he wasn’t, he was just a man trying to keep his clan alive.”

“And he was guided to a place where doing so would also enact grander things.”

“And I suppose that is where you find yourself?” she said skeptically.

G’Kar gave her a knowing smile, which he was sure would irritate her spectacularly. “Consider a hand that knows it acts in accordance to another’s will: is it blameless in the acts it carries out? Does it share in equal responsibility? We are hands contemplating the minds that direct us - but our circumstances, the objects within reach, our own condition - all these act upon those minds in turn. We were brought into being by forces greater than ourselves, but we are a force unto ourselves, pushing back and studying and, at times, communicating with higher power.

“G’Quan believed that the Universe was never to be mistaken for callous and unfeeling. Nothing exists simply to exist - a thing exists because conditions were created for its arrival. Every actor in every place has history, and nothing can be understood without understanding its trajectory. Creation is always purposeful. And what is purposeful can be understood.”

Na’Toth took this in for a moment, slowly draining her glass. Then, abruptly, she shook her head with a snort. “You would make even God submit to G’Quan’s thought.”

G’Kar laughed. “And where I have succeeded with God, somehow you still elude me.”

She leaned against him with a laugh. He wrapped an arm around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder. “Sometimes I wish I _could_ see it all as you do. I wish I could believe that every life and every death is just one drop in a great tide.”

“But you don’t?”

She sighed, slumping against him. “I don’t. The Universe feels cold to me. It has shown nothing but indifference to us while we have suffered, and I feel no need to show it anything other than the same.”

It was fair, and it was reasonable, and it was wrong, but how could he tell her that? Instead he lifted his glass and drank, and let the sweet sting of taree roll over his tongue. The taree was too acidic, with thin substance. The berries had been picked before they were ripe, perhaps synthesized in a colony aquaponics lab; a plant that never saw the sun, nor stretched its roots in its home soil. He savoured it anyway, as they sat in silence.

Na’Toth nursed the remainder of her pint. “I want you to be right,” she said, quietly.

“Take heart,” he squeezed his arm around her shoulders. “Because I always am.”

She scoffed and gave him a shove as she sat up.

“There’s Dr. Franklin,” she nodded past G’Kar. They watched him a while - he didn’t spot them across the Zocalo, though he seemed to be scanning the crowd from where he stood at the top of the stairs leading to the monorail. “He looks terrible,” she concluded.

“I believe he is a victim of that very Human tendency to carry every burden alone.”

“He’s mistrustful. You could learn a thing or two.”

“You like him,” G’Kar smirked.

“So do you,” she smirked back.

“And who could blame me? Doctor,” G’Kar called out. He stood and waved until he caught his eye, and beckoned him over. Franklin smiled weakly and nodded, sidling through the crowd toward the bar.

He did indeed look worse for wear than the last time they had spoken - and that had been before the defeat of Homeworld. He had the look of a man waiting to be ambushed, tense in every angle, but without the energy to even support his own vigilance. “G’Kar; Na’Toth,” he said when he approached, bowing his head vaguely. They both made the sk’lekh in reply. “I was looking for Dr. Khoury. Have you seen her up here?”

“I’m afraid not. But if you are not in much of a hurry, I would very much like to buy you a drink,” G’Kar smiled, motioning to the empty seat beside him.

“Oh, I…” Franklin scratched his head. “Uh, sure, I’m off duty. Should head back to Downbelow soon though, I have to work on the shift roster now that we’re down a few volunteers who went over to the _G’Tok_.” He pulled the bar stool back, and the drink list at his seat flickered to life.

“Of course. And how grateful we are to have had the chance to bolster their ranks. If you have not already received thanks from War Leader Na’Kal, I would relay them again on his behalf.”

Franklin nodded absently, not accepting or declining the thanks. He did not mean to be rude, of course, and G’Kar was accustomed to ignoring accidental rudeness. “I just wish there was more I could have done. With the _G’Tok_ , the treaty with the Centauri, the whole damned thing…” he huffed out his dissatisfaction. “Feels like all I’m doing is handing out painkillers and platitudes.”

“You do far more. And Narns do not forget a good deed.” As if in response to his words, he felt a twinge across his lower back. While he delivered thanks on behalf of another, he himself had never thanked Franklin for coming to him, not when he came with an Emperor’s message, nor when he came with a doctor’s unsentimental hands. It seemed too late now, for either. A war had charged through the midst of their acquaintance, and where it had pulled them together, it had also dug a chasm between them. Too little to say. Too much to do.

As the bartender approached, Franklin looked up. “Pint of the Ganymedian, thanks.”

“On my bill, if you please - for our weary hero.” G’Kar clapped a hand to Franklin’s shoulder, making him jump in his seat - like so many aliens, Humans were wary of being touched. He let go, but not without a gentle squeeze that he hoped was reassuring.

“Thanks. So, Na’Toth said there were… customs? That I missed? I hope I didn’t offend the crew.”

“Not at all. But a few simple gestures when joining a work crew are customary. We value our workmates as family - Humans use the word ‘clan’ rather broadly, but I believe it applies.”

“A work clan?”

“Yes - work is how one acts upon society, so of course it is vital to do it in harmony with your workmates. As a visiting worker you are invited into the ‘family’ for a while. Commonly, a new member and the crew leader will serve each other at the first shared meal. There is also…” he paused, considering Franklin. He would be small, for a Narn. Small and delicate. But he knew Humans were sensitive about their stature. “Well,” he said vaguely, “Perhaps not all things translate across species.”

“What? You think I’d mess it up?”

“Not at all, it’s just…” He turned to Na’Toth questioningly. “Ghet’tel?”

She looked at Franklin and winced. “He’d break a bone. Or five,” she said in G’Kham-et. “But now you’ve got him interested.”

G’Kar turned back to Franklin, who was frowning at them curiously. “I don’t mean to speak of you as though you are not here, doctor. It’s a particularly… Narn custom, to trade a blow with each of your new workmates. Nothing too severe,” he said quickly, to tamp down Franklin’s alarmed expression. “We have rules about such things - no strikes to the face, and the use of claws would be a great offense in this case.”

Franklin stared a moment. “I’m sure there’s a few layers of social context I’m missing here…”

“Indeed,” G’Kar sighed. “Imagine my own confusion when I first left Narn. Essentially, disagreements are inevitable, and ghet’tel acts as a ‘pass’ for any minor scuffle. Of course, if one continues to cause trouble, more serious measures must be taken.” As he talked, G’Kar was increasingly distracted by the way Franklin kept looking, rather intently, at his mouth. His gaze was unwavering, even as he took a sip of his beer when it arrived, sweeping his own tongue across his lips to catch the drops of foam. G’Kar found, however, that the attention was not unpleasant.

“So it’s normal to… fight a coworker? Physically?”

“Yes,” Na’Toth answered brusquely. Franklin’s eyes flicked over to her. “And it’d be healthier for all you aliens to try it out sometime. You’re all so repressed. And look where it’s got you.” As she spoke, G’Kar realized his self-indulgent mistake. Franklin was, of course, focused on reading their lips, probably struggling to hear over the din of the Zocalo.

“Na’Toth…”

“It’s true. Look at the Centauri. Won’t even fight with their hands. And the Minbari are even worse - they probably have five rituals before you’re allowed to touch your own mother.” She downed the last of her beer. “They look at us like we’re animals. For having the gall to admit we have bodies.”

“What she means to say is that for a Narn, the physicality of emotion is very important,” G’Kar raised his voice over the din and gestured more freely, signing to underscore the thought, at which Franklin’s expression livened. “To deny your body is to deny true expression - and in a conflict, you would deny the other the honesty of your disagreement.”

He gave him a sympathetic smile. “Council meetings must’ve been tough for you, huh?”

G’Kar barked a laugh. “You have no idea. Of course I regret the circumstances, but there is some freedom in no longer having to pretend that I am not constantly on the verge of making my arguments to Ambassador Mollari very… definite.” He did not use an appropriate gesture - ‘ambassador’ - for Mollari. It was all the same to Franklin, who probably would not have recognized it anyway, but Na’Toth snickered into her empty glass.

Franklin smiled and took a sip of his ale, looking at G’Kar curiously. “Seems like you're in a good mood,” he ventured.

“Oh, how could I not be? I have just been visited by a vision of divinity. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day, and least of all before an entire crowd of aliens, or in the clear act of favour toward-”

“Don’t let him get started,” Na’Toth interjected. “Unless you want a five hour lecture on the historicity of G’Lan.”

“It’s alright,” Franklin laughed. “I only heard a little about what happened - everybody in the Zen Garden saw an angel - or, well, something like a cultural equivalent.”

“Your… angels,” G’Kar said, inventing a gesture with his fingers flapping uncertainly as a pair of wings, which made Franklin chuckle. “What are they like?”

“Depends who you ask. Part of my faith is keeping an open mind - but I’ve always been fond of the monstrous depictions of divinity, personally. Seems selfish to think that divine apparitions would look like ourselves. Maybe that’s what I would have seen if I’d been there. A many-eyed, many-winged thing wrestling me into God’s will.”

“Wrestling?” Na’Toth leaned over the counter with interest.

“Sure, Humans are always challenging our gods one way or another. Jacob and the angel - they wrestled through the night and at dawn, Jacob still wouldn’t let go until he received a blessing.”

Na’Toth turned to G’Kar thoughtfully. “Perhaps if I had been there I could have wrestled some answers from G’Lan for you.”

“Perhaps you would have received a blessing,” G’Kar smiled. “Despite all your attempts to resist.”

“I wish I’d been there,” Franklin said, looking into his glass contemplatively. “What was it like? Did G’Lan say anything to you?”

“Not as such,” G’Kar admitted wryly. “They did not come for me, of course - they came for Sheridan. But all the same, time seemed to hold still for a moment. Long enough for them to look into my mind and reach assurances into my heart. Telling me that I have not strayed from my path.”

Franklin thought for a moment, taking a slow drink. There was so little there, on a Human face, that every little detail seemed to come out in stark contrast when animated. Yet somehow, they could retreat to total inscrutability when they chose. “You think this is all according to plan?”

“‘Plan’? No, there is no plan. Purpose, yes. Things move. Things change. A follower of G’Quan only hopes to understand the mechanisms and the reasonings by which they do.”

“So when you say that you’re walking the right path-”

“We have our agency. We are looking for opportunities, places to affect those changes, and I believe-” he didn’t look back at Na’Toth, who was probably scowling behind him. “I know I have mine.”

Franklin’s expression softened. “I’m glad,” he said, so quietly that G’Kar barely heard him over the bustle of the Zocalo - then, less kindly, “I hope I can find mine.”

It was strange. In those weary eyes, G’Kar saw - had seen, had taken, had used - such infinite capacity for gentleness; for acceptance. But it seemed that gaze could not be turned inward. Still, he smiled, faintly but genuinely, and perhaps G’Kar flattered himself, but his eyes seemed to linger thoughtfully upon G’Kar’s lips again, even when he did not move them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a grip! but in writing this chapter I guess I remembered this is supposed to be a love story?
> 
> (I also went back and added a bit of physicality to G'Kar and Na'Toth's argument in chapter 6 to keep in line with what they're saying here. is that a fic faux pas? sorry)


	9. COMMON TONGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'Kar is asked to go home.

TO: DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // MEDLAB 1  
SUBJ: NA’FAR

Heads up about the Narn on board, Na’Far. He’s working for the Centauri trying to get G’Kar back to Narn for ‘trial,’ and angling to replace him on B5. (I know, I know) We can’t get involved either way, internal affairs and all. Check in if you have a minute? You’re closer to this than we are, but I’ll be damned if we just let G’Kar get stolen away for some show trial.

Commander Susan Ivanova  
Executive Officer, Babylon 5

—

It was difficult not to wonder where Na’Far had been, during the first occupation. Mere weeks ago, G’Kar would have been able to request detailed intelligence on the ‘Councilor’ who had stood in front of his desk, one arm held behind his back in polite deference. But such means were no longer his - such records likely no longer existed - and G’Kar was left to look, and wonder.

If Na’Far had been involved with the Centauri the first time, it must have been done very well, very secretively: the Kha’Ri’s dedication to rooting out collaborators in the early years of liberation was absolute and merciless, and the people had been zealous - perhaps overzealous - in assisting. Perhaps Na’Far had been wise and turned tail on his masters when he saw the tide turning in the last years of the war. There were always rumours of such opportunists - and those caught out had been rehabilitated to varying degrees of satisfaction. Was Na’Far among them? Had he learned his place and made amends for his missteps?

Na’Far would have been young, then, wherever he was, young like G’Kar was. And G’Kar was not above noticing his fine features, his mild and pleasant tenor, his sharp eyes; perhaps, in his youth, he had been a serving-boy to Centauri courtiers. Perhaps he had been planted in resistance cells, charming his way into intelligence above his station and feeding it back to the Centauri. Perhaps he had simply been a body at their command. A labourer. A soldier. A clerk. It was all the same to be used by them.

Though he would not admit it aloud, G’Kar found it more comfortable to imagine any number of these scenarios, than to face the more likely story that Na’Far had fought, just as G’Kar had. He had likely fought, and won, and sung, and reveled, and toiled dutifully, obediently, just as G’Kar had. What then, but to consider that his was the prevailing thought on Homeworld, and that G’Kar was the one outdated, alone, apart?

It was apparent that Na’Far believed what he said. He did not speak with the duplicitous tongue of a turned man - he truly believed he was doing what was best for Narn. He believed that giving the Centauri concessions would win their people time to heal and recoup; that those measures were temporary; that it wiser to give and regain ground than to struggle to maintain it. He was certain that they needed only to bide their time and the path to victory would present itself. Perhaps all of the new, so-called ‘Ancillary Circle’ of elevated traitors like him believed these things.

Na’Far was a fool. He was a well-placed fool, and it made G’Kar’s temples ache painfully to think that he, and all his work, might be supplanted by a fool such as this. These early years would steer the decades of struggle to come, and a fool like Na’Far could drive it all to the ground. The consciences of Narn existed in such precarity that yes, for all of G’Kar’s faith, he still feared that they could be tempted and misled. They were desperate to be seen, to be understood as people with pride and worth; and the Centauri knew much of their pride. They knew just how to madden a Narn, to deprive them of recognition, to strip away the things that made them whole, alive. They knew how to confine the urges of a body, crying out against its oppression, until it became self-destruction; lashing out in unbearable despair among their kin like a disease eating its own flesh.

But the slavers walked a razor’s edge - push their cruelty too far, and the rage of a Narn’s pride would overcome its fear. So they learned to offer pittances of personhood, meaningless titles and strata, all to build a hollow sense of structure, of acknowledgment. Starved as much in body as in soul, Narns could be led by fools like Na’Far into thinking it was better to eat poison than to starve, better to accept the meagre semblance of reward and recognition than be looked upon as beasts. They could allow themselves to be tamed, trained, and turned upon each other, all while the hand holding their leashes went unscathed.

In the end, G’Kar turned Na’Far from his room without the courtesy of a drink, and it was clear from the taut displeasure of Na’Far’s face that he understood. It felt improper to spurn a Narn of his age, in times as dire as this. But it would have felt even more improper to act as though he and Na’Far were on equal terms. His heretofore silent bodyguard, however, lingered a moment in the doorway as they made to leave. G’Kar regarded him suspiciously as he bowed deeply - too deeply - and said, with uncertain reverence, “Kha’Ri’Akar,” and made what G’Kar supposed was meaningful eye contact, whose meaning he could not decipher.

—

TO: DR. STEPHEN FRANKLIN // MEDLAB 1  
SUBJ: RE: BACK TO NARN?

Not necessary. We are handling it. Collaborators get nothing but the wrong end of a claw.  
(G’Kar says thank you for your concern.)

Akar’ya(’3) Na’Toth

—

It was late in B5’s night cycle when G’Kar and Na’Toth left their quarters to meet with the bodyguard Ta’Lon in one of the several identical conference rooms in Green Sector. The hall lights were dimmed, and though the bluish tint of the station’s lights had once unsettled him, G'Kar supposed he had found a growing familiarity with their coldness.

“I don’t trust him,” Na'Toth said preemptively, as they walked the hall briskly. She checked her dagger belt, tugging at the loose end and palming the hilt of the blade by habit.

“I would be most shocked if you did.” She gave him a cutting look, and he sighed, “Of course, I don’t trust him either. Yet. But I am interested to see what he has to offer.”

“You assume he has anything to offer. He was deliberately vague. I hate that.”

“You would have hated if he stated his intent directly, too.”

“Sure, but then I would have been able to simply tell him to go back to being a Centauri lapdog and slept another hour.”

“He asked only for me. You could have slept.”

She clicked her teeth. “What, and let you out on your own? You’d wade into enough trouble to drown a rylol, and then it’d be on my head.”

Ta’Lon was standing by the porthole when they entered Conference Room 2b, the room lights set to comfortable dimness and the heat turned up slightly. He turned to greet them both with the sk’lekh, again too deeply. They returned the gesture curtly, from across the conference table in the middle of the room. None of them moved to sit down.

“Forgive my asking to meet in private, Kha’Ri’Akar. But I could not refuse the opportunity to speak with you.”

G’Kar folded his hands in front of him, and the three of them stood apprehensively around the table. He studied Ta’Lon carefully. He was younger than G’Kar, older than Na’Toth, but, standing tall with his sword arm held primly behind him, he had the air of someone playing at noble soldier. G’Kar did not particularly care for it. “And what would you have to say that your Ghel’lar has not already made evident?”

“I do not speak for Na’Far. I speak for myself. And I wish to join you.”

G’Kar and Na’Toth looked at each other. Her eyes were sharp with skepticism, and he guessed that his own expression matched it.

To their silence, Ta’Lon continued, “You are the last of the Kha’Ri. You are the best possible leader of our people. The Universe has brought me to you, and I will not deny its guidance. Let me be your hand.”

“And what use do I have for a hand that will defy its command? You are still Na’Far’s swordsman in bond, and here you are not a day after meeting me, telling me you will betray him.”

Ta’Lon frowned. “I would betray many more by continuing to serve him. You have seen his ways.”

“As have you,” Na’Toth snarled. “But you followed him, until convenience allowed you an escape?”

“I am no mindless servant,” Ta’Lon said, with an indignant edge to his voice that he had not earned. “I positioned myself to follow Na’Far here. To meet you. And now I have met you, and I am doing as I intended.”

“And what, precisely, is your intent?” G’Kar narrowed his eyes skeptically.

“It is my belief that we have neglected our roots, and caused the whole tree to suffer for that neglect. I believe your leadership could return us to the strength of our former selves - a version of ourselves not defined in opposite to the Centauri, and not defined in the bureaucracy of work. A world where we are not simply the conquered organizing against the conquerors.”

“A romantic,” Na’Toth scoffed, drawing Ta’Lon’s attention. “No one still living has ever known that world. We remade ourselves, and we did it well. Someday people like you will have to catch up.”

“What good is denying the traditions that led us for millennia?”

“What good is wallowing in what we left behind for good reason? We’re stronger for it.”

“Our families gave us strength. Our leaders were stronger when they were chosen from the ground up, proving their merit to their clans, rather than being picked by councils of strangers.”

Na’Toth laughed. “Merit? You would rather follow at someone’s feet for the coincidence of parentage than merit.”

Ta’Lon began to pace impatiently on his side of the table. “The work-clans are just another way of denying our truer natures. The Circles, endless tiers and subdivision - it all just makes it harder to correct our course back to the way we once thrived. Throwing away our cultures and histories in the name of efficiency strips down our very souls.”

Na’Toth shook her head defiantly. “Nobody ever asked you to give up your family altogether. Eat where you like. Pray when you like. But blood didn’t rebuild G’Khamazad. It was the work. And we were forced to realize that we could sustain ourselves on that work when the Centauri came and ripped everything else away. But we can heal from that wound, rather than pick at it and try to make it as it once was. The Centauri left a scar across our whole world, our whole culture - and pretending it isn’t there won’t make us any stronger.”

“Ah, yes - and all the technocracy, all the ways the Kha’Ri charged ahead with new laws, new industry, new society, new ways to divide ourselves into the most productive automata - that served us so well,” he retorted.

G’Kar frowned. He was defensive about the Kha’Ri, defensive about following its order and defensive about being its sole survivor. It had been difficult, messy work, and he had not seen nor taken part in it all, and yet it fell to him to stand as its paragon. They had reordered society with the responsibility of government thrust suddenly into their unaccustomed hands. They glued together the disparate bands of Narn strongholds that grew during the war, mending the fractionated wings of hot-tempered militia - as a wounded, angry world, they had all clawed their way toward progress despite the constant drag of politicking and argument among allies. They had cleft themselves from the brambles of ruin, and in the process had forged new bonds to replace those torn apart by the Centauri. For some, it wasn’t enough - perhaps it never would be.

Ta’Lon’s criticism was familiar. There were many advocates of the traditional clan systems, though they did not usually tend young. Perhaps Ta’Lon had been so lucky as to have had a family that survived the occupation more or less intact. Perhaps he had simply had one too many bad workmates and had turned to the old structures as solution. It mattered little - what mattered to G’Kar was whether he would forgo his complaints when duty called.

Na’Toth, for her part, scowled bitterly. “We had to rebuild somehow! What is it - you think we would have been better off holing up in the ground as though we’re still tunnel-dwellers? Throwing all the Centauri guns in the sea and singing old songs? Is that how we would have protected ourselves when they hurled asteroids at our world?”

“I would say no such thing. It was never by our own action that they invaded, not the first time, and not the last.” Ta’Lon spread his hands in appeasement, turning back to G’Kar. “I have come to you now because the time for pettiness is long past. We are at war, and winning that struggle must come first. Whatever argument I find with the Kha’Ri can wait until there is a Kha’Ri again.”

Na’Toth’s remained unimpressed. “Some endorsement.”

G’Kar snorted. “Of all people I would expect you to see the value in a colleague who offers critique rather freely.”

She took the point, with a huff.

“You understand my position?” Ta’Lon spoke with guarded curiosity.

“I have understood it many times before. But it hardly becomes more convincing.” He turned to Ta’Lon. “The old clan systems made it all the easier for the Centauri to divide us when they first came to our world, turning family against family in a bid for the best scraps. They used the hierarchies already existent to make some clans feel strong, raised above the rest and given power - but let them forget that we were all underfoot, together.”

“You think the same of Na’Far.”

“Because they are the same,” Na’Toth answered snidely.

Ta’Lon stood in pensive stoicism, revealing nothing, though his eyes were sharp with thought. There was cleverness and determination behind them - dangerous and promising at once. G’Kar stepped around to Ta’Lon’s side of the table in conciliation. “If I do not believe the old ways are worth returning to, will you still follow me? Will you learn from me? Or, as with your Ghel’lar, would you stay at my side only long enough to find someone you deem more worthy?”

Ta’Lon stood tall with promise. “I thought, ignorantly, that Na’Far might be the leader we needed to band together. I was wrong. Whatever society you hope to return us to, I cannot imagine you want it to come about only when the Centauri decide it should.”

“That much we can agree upon.”

“Then I will follow you, and learn from you, until we have that society again, with all the luxury of disagreement returned to us.”

—

TO: NA’FAR // BLUE 23-C  
SUBJ: RE: MEETING

Na’Far,

Thank you, but I’m plenty informed, and no, you may not speak to any patients under my care. Several have already vouched for your tactics.

We have nothing to say to each other. My only ‘advice’, since you seem keen to have it, would be to leave before you find yourself embarrassed.

Dr. Stephen Franklin  
Chief of Staff, Babylon 5 MedLab

—

The docking lounge was well-chosen for their final meeting: public, so that neither party could have an outburst without drawing undue alien attention. Transitory, because it was clear that one or the other would have to decide to leave first.

It was a slow afternoon for the port - still recovering from the business of their lone bomber just weeks ago, a few of the docking bays were still out of operation. Na’Far and Ta’Lon were waiting for them, neither sitting. A small, indiscreet crowd of other Narns lingered in view behind where G’Kar and Na’Toth stood, watching curiously from the adjoining hall that led to the elevators.

Na’Far’s expression was one of disappointment, and perhaps a glimmer of well-concealed fear. G’Kar knew that, when he returned to Narn, Na’Far would be punished for his failure. He knew that if Na’Far had kith or kin remaining, they would be used as further leverage. For all his foolishness, Na’Far had the good sense not to mention it: threats against G’Kar’s own had not moved him - he was unbendable to threats against another’s.

Instead, he said flatly, “It may be well enough for you to follow your own pride. But consider what you are doing to your followers here, G’Kar-” there, that over-familiar use of his name. As though they understood one another. As though he had not come to Babylon 5 to ask G’Kar to die for him.

“It has been well-considered,” Ta’Lon interjected before G’Kar could respond. Na’Far turned to his swordsman in surprise. “And it has been found more palatable than your alternative.”

“Ta’Lon,” Na’Far clicked his teeth in dismay. “I presume this is where you leave me.”

“You presume correctly. I have come to understand that there is no value in safety that comes at the cost of freedom. And you are not willing to understand the same.”

G’Kar caught a glimpse of something - pain? - in Na’Far’s face before he settled it back to blank disinterest. “Very well,” he said, looking around them as Ta’Lon stepped away from his side, to G’Kar’s. He would only make a fool of himself by arguing further as he now stood outnumbered even in their small arrangement, let alone the group of G’Kar’s hard-earned followers who looked on from the hall.

“Na’Toth, Ta’Lon - would you spare us a moment?”

They both bowed their leave curtly before joining the other Narns. Quietly, G’Kar took Na’Far by the arm and led him further from the hall, and Na’Far stiffened uncomfortably at the touch - as though it were unfamiliar. Perhaps the Centauri had even taken that from him.

“Don’t go back to them. It is not too late to change your path.”

Na’Far’s lips curled. “And what shall I do instead? Serve you? Live amongst your followers? None on this station would accept me - you said so yourself.”

“You only have to prove your intent. We are not so cruel as to shun one who shows some repentance.”

“Repentance for _what_?” Na’Far jerked away from G’Kar. “ _You_ are the one throwing our people into their swords, never being touched by them yourself. You are the one secreted away here, speaking as though you understand our struggle when you have not been home for years. You do not know Narn anymore, and it does not know you.”

It was a quick stab to his heart. An easy target. “And in my absence, you would have our people fit for chains,” G’Kar hissed, forgetting that he had pulled Na’Far aside with the intent to appeal for kinship.

Na’Far shook his head in dismay. He did not even have the decency to look angry. “I am providing them food and shelter. Simple needs that you seem not to care for.”

“I care for what you do not. Where is your pride? What good is it to accept a life set in their terms?”

“What good is it to die before you have a chance to fight? You do not know how our people tire. You were away while the war was waged, and the image of Narn in your head is one that no longer exists. You have not seen G’Khamazad razed to the ground again. You have not seen the camps.”

“So you have witnessed their brutality and still choose to serve them,” G’Kar spat. “That makes you worse than a coward.” He struck Na’Far squarely in the chest, his fist closed, claws folded away. It was as inoffensive as a strike could be, in full view of B5 security, but still those watchful Human eyes glanced to them warily. “You only see us broken and desperate. But I remember what it means to be a Narn-” He raised his hand again, Humans be damned, let them see-

Na’Far snarled, finally, tension uncoiling in a split second into a threat, a promise of release; a real Narn with his claws spread and his shoulders tensed and hunched. But almost immediately he caught sight of the security guards encroaching and he steadied his body. Though his gaze still seethed, his fingers relaxed at his sides, his back straightened impassively.

“We have nothing more to discuss, G’Kar. I will return to our Homeworld. And you will stay here,” he said with cold disdain. “Just as you prefer it.” Na’Far turned to the docking bay, his feet set surely on their path, leaving G’Kar alone on his, unargued, unsatisfied. 

—

TO: [ENTER RECIPIENT]  
SUBJ: [ENTER MESSAGE SUBJECT]

[DRAFT]  
I wonder, doctor, do you tire of death? I imagine you hard at work, saving and prolonging all the lives you can, yet knowing that for all your defiance, eventually your enemy will claim all those you have helped. We are all so few, and so brief. Do you think of how the long, bountiful years you might add to a single soul’s duration are just a breath in the lifetime of the world? What is the weight of a grateful heart against the only inevitability of the universe? Does it ever feel cruel to give life, knowing its final claim is inescapable?

I suppose your work is only ever done at that scale, the scale of single hearts and single gratitudes. That if you did not accept the smallness of your duty, you would not accept it at all.

My duty calls me to keep a record of my work as Kha’Ri’Akar, but the longer I am away, the more I feel that title is not mine to claim. And even if it were, who would read these words and gain from them? What Narn would be inspired by a submission to such tedious purpose? And what alien could understand the circumstances of its binding upon me?

I am as weary of carrying the pain of my world as I am of carrying its hope. Do you tire of the same? My people look to me as though I have the truths they seek. They look to me as though I was not young, not so very long ago - as though I did not have my own elders and leaders to turn to. They look to me to say prayers for them, and sometimes to be the one to answer theirs.

Na’Far, instead, asked only for me to return home, and it was a simple matter of duty that I refused. I am ordered to remain here, and remain here I shall. There is no universe in which I could accept his offer. But I cannot tell you how badly my heart longs to go. Yes, it would be surrender. Yes, it would take me from my place and my purpose, here, which I fought so hard to understand and accept. Yes, I would die, at the hands of our conquerors and their traitorous servants. Yes, I would lose the work of a lifetime - of many lifetimes, of all my comrades who sacrificed everything for the dream those traitors seek to quash. But for all that knowledge I still yearn to plant my feet in the soil, one last time, to feel the wind and the sun against my cheek and return my last breath to my world.

I wish I could tell this to anyone and be understood. I wish you could feel the shape of the grief that I poured into you, in a language you cannot speak: history, both mine and my world’s. I wish I could let go of all this pain and all this hope and bleed away into the earth where I belong. I wonder, would you let me? Or would you raise me from my knees and breathe life back into me? Would your duty compel you to save me, or would your compassion compel you to let me go?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> G'Kar's profound loneliness is not really textual in B5 but I feel like it underlines everything in his arc from S2 onward. I thought, aren't I undercutting that by having Na'Toth stick around and emphasizing his relationship with the Narns aboard B5? Wouldn't their company soothe his feelings of isolation? Then I thought, isn't it even more delicious if they don't :^)


	10. ITCH ITCH ITCH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen takes a break.

The Zocalo was just settling into the brief lull of late afternoon, after even the most straggling lunches were finished and cleared away. The small restaurants were taking a reprieve before setting up for dinner, and the bars were mostly empty. The aisles between the market stalls saw a slow trickle of wanderers, a burbling hum of languages and footfalls still low enough to talk over.

Stephen was on a break. Doctor Cao had not taken no for an answer this time, with Stephen’s work on the training program on the multi-species immunoassayer rather rudely interrupted as it neared 16h00. He had been nearly there, enveloped in the gentle bliss of a steadily productive afternoon, when she had come to bother him again: reminding him he hadn’t taken his lunch, and that he was meant to spend the rest of the evening on casework anyway. He did not work shifts, technically, and he did not have to listen to anyone, technically. But with his focus knocked out of place, Stephen left grudgingly to placate his well-meaning staff. He knew it was for his own good, even when he would have preferred to power through another hour or two of detailing the new technical manuals. But he was starting to feel the ebb of the last stim, and decided it would be better to coast through the last of it before taking another after his break, to see him through the rest of the night.

His feet carried him by habit toward the only place he tended to frequent for a meal. But as he walked through the narrow channel of booths to one side of the market floor, he spotted his preferred barber reclining in her chair. She was flipping through a tattered paperback disinterestedly with one boot tapping along to the inoffensively bland dance mix playing from tinny portable speakers on the vanity in front of her.

Feeling over the back of his head experimentally, he made a snap decision and stopped short of the food stalls to wave for her attention.“Tori. Hey.”

“Stephen! Been a while.” She hopped to her feet, tossing the book on the narrow table that occupied most of the back wall of her crowded booth. She pushed her long locs over one shoulder as she raised the chair upright, looking at him sidelong with an easy smile. “Trim? Little edge-up?”

“Think so.” He pressed his fingertips through the hair at his temples, and her eyes followed.

“You been at it again with the clippers?”

He winced as he sat down in the vacated chair. “That obvious?”

“Only to the most carefully trained observer,” she laughed, draping the nylon cape over his shoulders and fastening it over a thin strip of paper at his neck.

“I thought I was doing fine.” He looked at himself in the mirror, trying to focus on his hair instead of the deep bags under his eyes, which seemed markedly more dramatic under the harsh overhead lights of the Zocalo. He made eye contact with Tori through the reflection. He couldn’t quite find the source of the strange twinge of guilt when she smiled at him undemandingly. “So, um, the usual,” he gestured vaguely.

“I gotcha. Not many options anyway, you give me so little to work with.” She mussed her fingers through the hair just beginning to tuft on the top of his head. “Sure you don’t wanna grow it out a bit? You’d have such cute curls up top.”

“I dunno. Old habits die hard.”

“Right. Lil navy brat, weren’t you?”

He made a face, trying not to see his father’s face as he squinted at his reflection. “Yeah. Got a little scruffier in med school. But you know how bad I am at keeping up with it now. Imagine how much worse I’d be if it got any longer.” He sat back into the well-worn cushions as Tori sighed theatrically, her locs tossing as she turned around.

“Yeah, yeah, too busy to look good, right?” she teased, rooting through a series of drawers in search of her clippers and guards. Tools at the ready, she set her hands on the chair behind his shoulders. “Alright. You all set?”

Stephen nodded, reaching up and turning off his hearing aid before detaching it with a soft click. The background chatter of the Zocalo dropped away immediately, and the buzz of Tori’s clippers filled his awareness on his hearing side, which faced the back of the booth.

He withdrew his hands under the cape and pocketed his hearing aid as she started by bringing his hairline almost down to bare skin, marking out a guideline from his temples around to the back of his head. She worked over his scalp in short, quick strokes, and it only took a minute for him to begin to doze, lulled by the rhythmic buzz and the indistinct hum of voices that floated by.

He tried to keep alert, watching Tori in the mirror as she softened the line above his right ear into a fade. He spotted her eying him in the reflection, smiling at him fondly as he started to nod off. Just barely present enough to find that a little embarrassing, he used the very last of his wakeful energy to lean back in the chair to keep himself from slumping forward.

It was a gentle squeeze on his shoulder that brought him back, and a voice that spoke carefully into his hearing ear - “Stephen?”

He blinked himself wearily awake, shifting upright with little sense of how much time had passed. He looked at himself in the mirror. While the sides had been tidied, the top of his hair was now lopsided - Tori was in the middle of clipping it into shape. “Got a visitor,” Tori said, giving him a nudge.

Stephen looked over. Standing just outside the booth, slightly in the way of foot traffic in the market, was Doctor Khoury, who smiled in greeting over the rim of her glasses. Her hair was let down from its usual tidy bun, which meant she was off-duty. She said something indistinct, waving her hand in the general direction of the market.

“Hey Amira. Don’t have my aid in,” he said, looking pointedly leftward to indicate his ear.

She nodded, pushing her glasses up the curve of her aquiline nose and facing him more directly. He read, “ _You on a break?_ ” on her lips, enunciated more clearly.

He glanced at the clock on the wall hanging in front of him, as Tori got back to work trimming near the crown of his head. “Yeah, got a bit left. I was gonna grab a bite.”

“ _The usua_ l?” She said with a wry smirk, the beginning of a predictable ribbing.

Stephen sighed. “Look, it’s sensible.”

“ _It’s bleak. But I’ll get it for you. Coffee?_ ”

“Can’t do caffeine and stims.”

Amira arched an eyebrow as she said, “ _So cut down on the stims_ ,” over-enunciating to make sure he read clearly.

“Alright, mom.” He rolled his eyes. She paused, with the look of someone about to give him a reprimand, so he shifted his gaze straight ahead into the mirror. Doctor Khoury was about ten years his senior, and although technically, she worked for him, he was never able to shake the feeling that he was trying to impress a fondly sarcastic professor.

He couldn’t quite relax again, even as Amira left to wander down the aisle of booths. He wished, briefly, that he’d just told Amira not to bother, that he’d lied and said he needed to head back to work immediately. The creeping itch of pain at his temples told him to focus, but there was nothing to focus on here, just the mechanical buzz in his right ear. He stared at Tori’s scarf in the mirror, biting his tongue to keep from fidgeting. He tried to recall the cases he had to look over later that night, grounding himself in the details: the fibrillating Centauri, the Gaim with filamentous rot, the several cases of Drazi flu that weren't improving as well as they should...

Tori gave him an affirmative pat on the shoulder once she had made a last few considering cuts and swept all the hair from around his neck. Relieved to be able to move again, he brushed his fingertips over the sides, feeling the satisfyingly short bristles and the admittedly much improved edge. “Looks good. Thanks.” He sat forward so she could undo the cape, and he reattached his heading aid, letting the Zocalo tune noisily back into place. A wash of meaningless voices and the underlying drone of ventilation fans brought him back to the present.

“No problem. Just try to come by before the next urge to DIY hits, alright? And uh,” she paused, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “Don’t mean to be out of line, but get some sleep. You look whacked. And you don’t usually pass out like, right away.”

“Um, yeah. Thanks. It’s been busy.”

“Right. Fair enough.”

By the time he paid up, Amira had returned, with her steaming thermos in one hand and a neatly wrapped package in the other. She handed him the small bar with disdain. “Franklin special.”

Tori looked over with interest as she cleaned the clippers and guards. “What is it?”

“The most depressing thing you can eat and still plausibly refer to as food,” Amira sighed, watching him unwrap it and take a first bite.

Stephen scowled around his mouthful. “It’s just a meal replacement bar.” It was also the easiest - and sometimes only - way to get calories down. His appetite always dwindled the busier he got. But still, he was taking care of it.

“They call it meal replacement because it can’t be considered a meal in any emotional sense,” she scoffed.

“You put something in it,” he said accusingly, after swallowing the bite. He lifted the bar to his eyes, scrutinizing it carefully.

“Just some vanilla extract, you monster. Won’t throw off your protein-carb balance, but you know, Shkke-Zherek does offer flavourings for those… concoctions.” She turned to Tori. “It’s his special blend of nutrient powders. Everything a growing boy needs, except any actual food.”

“Food is just nutrients, Dr. Khoury,” he said dryly.

“It’s also one of life’s small joys, _Dr. Franklin_.” She reached into a pocket of her woolly cardigan and pulled out a small nectarine, which she tossed to him. “Don’t complain about the sugar. Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

Stephen nodded, waving a goodbye to Tori as they left. He and Amira walked in comfortable silence down the length of the market stalls. He tossed the nectarine to himself as they walked, letting it roll around in the concavity of his palm. It was perfectly ripe, probably fresh off a station-grown tree, and it wafted a gently sugary scent. It was a thoughtful gesture. He just didn’t have the appetite, so he pocketed it with an apologetic smile, to which she sighed knowingly.

He liked Doctor Khoury. They understood each other. She was the lead in MedLab 3, which meant they rarely worked together, on paper. But they had started the free clinic in Downbelow nearly two years ago as a front for the underground railroad for telepaths, and both had carried on the work there even after it served its intended purpose. They made a good team. She was brilliant, in a way that only honed experience could produce, and, as Stephen freely recognized, she had the better bedside manner of the two of them. But more vitally, she was one of the few people who not only accepted that his politics informed his work, but found it necessary and natural.

Making their way to the quieter seating area that capped the length of the Zocalo, they came to a vacant bench under one of the less paltry-looking ficus trees lining the walkway. “So how’s shift?” she asked as they sat. The steam rose from her thermos and briefly fogged her glasses as she took a sip.

“Nothing major. Almost done the new training manual. We still have those Brakiri twins waiting on Klowkere’s say-so on the results he got from Brakir. That guy’s driving me nuts, but I don’t think we can get him replaced anytime soon. I’m pretty sure I could run the analysis myself, but I hate to think what he’ll be like if I actively piss him off.”

She chuckled. “Well, I had a chance to catch up with Avenn today. She has some suggestions for the bone repair matrix I can run by you later.”

“Good. There might be a way we can hijack it for the Narns too. There’s got to be a better way to osteotomize when they get out of control.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “We decided to amputate F’Ghel’s leg. I really hate doing stuff like that. Totally medieval. But there was no way we could operate with the bone closing over the infection. I think it’ll heal up well, though.”

“I saw the report last night. He’ll probably want to get fitted for a prosthetic and fly out as soon as he can, too,” Stephen sighed.

“You were in Downbelow yesterday?”

“Just covered a little for Adrien,” he waved a hand dismissively.

Her expression faltered. “How late were you there?”

“I dunno, 2 or 3h00 I think. Wasn’t too busy so I was just catching up on reports. Re-entered a few of Adrien’s notes, you know how they are about transcribing. Basically inscrutable,” he chuckled.

“Right.” She said nothing for a moment, looking into her lap and fiddling with the lid of her thermos. “I… heard we got hassled again.”

“Oh, that? Yeah, I missed it by a bit. Think Ry’Lok chased ‘em off pretty well. But…” He glanced around their surroundings. “I don’t know if I’m just paranoid, but I don’t think it was any joe off the grey decks. I think it was Nightwatch. They seem to be getting a little… intense,” he said, lowering his voice.

Maybe Amira would find it melodramatic, but he was starting to think they were better safe than sorry, with some of the rumours going around. Ears everywhere that led straight back to Clarke. People disappearing in the night back home, replaced by fascimile voices on the comms. Even on the station, Nightwatch was taking people in for so-called sedition, and Stephen, for all the protection his position gave him, was probably as seditious as any of them put together.

She didn’t seem to find it funny, and leaned in closer. “I know. And Earth Alliance isn't doing a damned thing about it. I just heard from Ellie that Earth denied about half of our last requisition order. It’ll be coming in next week.”

“ _Half_? Fuck’s sake, that’s not a slap on the wrist, people are going to die!”

“Doesn’t matter to them if those people aren’t Human,” she said grimly. “You can guess which half they left out. Almost no anticoagulants or levo-adapter gels, so Narn surgery is going to get even tougher. None of the heavier duty electroporation gear. They didn’t even OK the damn batteries for the immunoassay rig. But good thing they’re sending all those IV kits,” she said flatly.

“The Minbari and Centauri stuff can be sourced out pretty easily.” Stephen rubbed his forehead, massaging hard into the burgeoning migraine at his temples. “We can try to lean more on supplies coming in from the 400s.”

“We’ll have to. That or we’re going to have to start shuttering some of the xeno care.”

He felt his heart freeze for a moment, stopped out of sheer rage or by the paralyzing thought of what to do with the hundreds of cases under their supervision, or the dread of being _useless_ \- “No. No, we’re not turning anyone away if I can help it. That'd be exactly what Earth wants. We’re the biggest open port this quadrant, the best xenobiologists, a goddamn- a model of interspecies collaboration, or whatever the hell the XC called it. What’s the point if we can’t handle any more than cuts and scrapes?”

“We can. And we will. We just can’t stretch ourselves so thin that we end up doing worse for people than sending them to their home sectors. And-” she put a hand to stop him as he started to interject. “I know. There’s nowhere for the Narns to go, same goes for some of the Drazi right now. I’m not saying ship everyone out on a liferaft and say good luck. I’m saying we have to know our limits. And I know you hate admitting you have any,” she added with a sympathetic smile.

“It’s not that,” he protested. “It’s the idea of being kept from doing work we’re damn well capable of, by some weaselly xenophobes trying to hamstring us! I want to find out who these people are keeping tabs on us and reporting back, miserable fucking cowards-” He tried to keep himself to a whisper, but the indignity was straining his voice as much as it felt like it was splitting his skull.

“Hey. Take it easy.” She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. There was no scorn in her face, just an earnest concern that burned right through his chest, through his racing heart. He swallowed the tense knot in his throat, but he couldn’t clear the sharp ache in his head.

“Ugh.” He covered his face with his hands to allow himself a moment of composure - a childish habit that probably dated itself to the first of many emotional arguments with his father. “I just want to do my job, Amira,” he said into his palms. “I don’t want to feel like I’m fighting tooth and nail every day just to have the _right_ to save lives. It’s what we _do_.”

“No,” she said firmly, gripping his wrist and pulling it gently down. He looked at her, probably looking as wretched as he felt. “Listen to me. What we do is give people the best care possible. Sometimes that means saving a life. Sometimes that means letting someone go in as much comfort as they can have. Sometimes it means realizing that we are not the important ones in this equation. Even if you were the best doctor in the quadrant, you don’t get to save everyone, Stephen.”

“I know that,” he snapped, pulling away from her. “I’m not out here just- stroking my ego, or whatever you think this is. I have nothing to prove,” he said, crossing his arms.

“That’s not what I mean-”

“Then what?” His head hurt so goddamn much, like hot iron plates crushing in mercilessly, like a plasma burn searing straight through one temple and out the other. “You’d rather I give up these patients who have nowhere else to turn - for what?”

“For your own bloody sake, Stephen!”

Out of the corners of his eyes he saw a few heads turn toward them, then away, disinterested, as they found little excitement in their scene. He stared at her, and the blood roared in his ears, and he wished desperately for the simple focus a stim would bring, wished he was in MedLab, doing his damn work like he was supposed to and not having to argue for the millionth time for having to do it, to Doctor Khoury of all people- “What… is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Amira sighed, curling her fingers around her warm thermos. She fidgeted uncomfortably with the turquoise ring on her index finger. “It means… you’re worrying me, alright? And I'm not the only one. I know saying that is just going to piss you off more, but you need to hear it from someone.”

His lips curled, he couldn’t help it. “I already have. Michael gave me the same-” he stopped himself, rubbing at his eyes. “Look. I’m fine. And I don’t know why everyone seems more bothered by me losing a little sleep than the fact that we’re on the brink of galactic war, this station is crawling with fascist informants, and that if I don’t do my job, they’ll have won.”

“Stephen,” she said sternly. “Listen to yourself. You know you’re burning yourself out. You’re running yourself off a cliff and I don’t know if you’ll even let anybody catch you. You don’t work alone, you lead a team. So lead.”

Was it fair to feel betrayed? Either way, he did. It was a cold feeling, worming its way inside his ribcage and seizing tight. He stood up brusquely, shoving his hands in his pockets. The nectarine - stupid thing - was there, in his way, and it was ridiculous to be infuriated by a thing like that, but there it was. He exhaled, resisting the strange, bodily impulse to grip into the soft flesh of the fruit under his fingertips.

“Alright. Look. I… appreciate your concern, Amira,” he said, calculatedly. “But we’re bleeding staff left and right, and nobody new is coming in. I have training to get on top of, a bigger caseload than ever, we’ve got aliens that nobody else this sector knows how to treat, and I’ll be damned if my claim to fame is being the doctor who turned them away. You know why I’m busting my ass off - you know better than anybody!" He did not mean it to sound like an accusation, but it did, and that- that was fine, really. He was in an accusatory mood. "If it seems like it’s getting the better of me, well, I can work on it, but I can work on other things too. You _know_ me.”

“Yes,” she sighed, looking down at her tea again. “And I’ve known other very good, very hard-working doctors like you. I know you don’t need to be mothered, Stephen, I’m just trying to let you know you’re not the pillar holding up the sky here, alright?”

The tight anger behind his eyes was dissipating into white noise, still irritating and itching, but quieter. Directed. “Right. Look… I should get back to MedLab.”

Amira looked disappointed, but she stood up with him and met his eyes directly. “Please… just get some rest. Real rest. Don’t give yourself any reasons to stay late tonight, alright?”

He forced a laugh as he straightened his shirt, ready to head for the elevator. “Well, you know how it is. Reasons tend to present themselves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really absorbed by the idea that Stephen:  
> a) as CMO isn't actually supposed to do much 'action' medical stuff  
> b) just has. terrible. bedside manner (essentially canon) BUT  
> c) is the most willing to just get up in an alien's grill. like no, I do not know what I'm doing, but yes, I am the boss, and yes, I am good at using space pubmed so let me at em
> 
> Also if my version of MedLab seems confusing it's basically: human staff to handle low-key cases/triage, plus various species' Actual Doctors (if available) around for things too intense for human xenobiologists. Mollari has a personal physician, as do a few other ambassadors/species bigwigs who are suspicious of the quality of care by xenobiologists. (G'Kar, in addition to having a crush on his cute doctor, believes in the cuban model.)


	11. HAVE YOU SMELLED THE BLOOD AND KNOWN THE HATE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'Kar has a vision.
> 
> CW: this one is like a lil on the telepathically torturesome side.

There was only one place he could go. G’Kar left his quarters in a frantic, thrashing mess produced by the first grips of Dust on his unprepared mind. He had been meditating, waiting for its effects, when it seized him suddenly by the spine, made all the air in his lungs heavy as lead, lit every nerve in his body on fire, sucked him down into the blackness of delirium-

G’Kar’s mind was opened, a set of jaws yawning so wide it threatened to tear itself in two. It was hungry. Inescapable voices poured in, despite his covered ears, and inescapable sights, despite his closed eyes, saturating every inch of his mind - but still it reached out for more. The minds of hundreds of aliens brewed a furious storm that crashed down upon him relentlessly, leaving him drowning and flailing, reaching for anything that could lead him out, and he found it: the scent of blood.

He blinked and he was there. He was only dimly aware of the path: the halls, crowded with staring yet unseeing eyes; the elevator, a thrumming channel; the door, a feeble barrier. He had Vir, struggling in his hand. Heavy. Afraid. He threw him down. He could taste his fear, rolling under his tongue and in his veins, and the boundary between Vir’s fear, Mollari’s fear, his own - it was impossible, it was terrifying, it was alive and thunderously loud against his skull but the blood pulled him forward, and Mollari’s mind was defenseless, letting G’Kar tear through the fear like a veil, because the blood- the _blood_ laid behind it, in intoxicating richness and decay, and the rest of the station fell away into empty noise as his focus sharpened with predatory intent, as the mind, so full and fragile, a bubble waiting to be burst, pulled him in and as he delved in through the panicked thrash, he heard screams, felt the snap of bone and the relenting give of flesh surrendering under his hands, but more than he felt anything he smelled the _blood_ -

The inside of Mollari’s mind was harsh, unreal, shadows pitch black against cold, furious light, and G’Kar shuddered down to his bones as he wrenched his way in. G’Kar had never visited Centauri Prime - hoped that he never would - but this was how he imagined their world, full of cruel, cold brightness and brilliance, all hauntingly stark and strange, masks upon masks, the very air itself needling a million pinpricks into his hide.

The sights first came to him in ragged pieces, unwilling and disarrayed, a dizzying flurry of memories whose tenuous connections he did not understand. But he pulled hard on every thread that passed through his hands, though the searching hurt him in turn the harder he tried, flashing white hot aches behind his eyes. He seized upon a thought as Mollari tried to hide it away - his appointment to Babylon 5, so tinted with shame, facing down a future of dreary, joyless bureaucracy. What surprise was it that G’Kar took his assignment proudly when Mollari balked at a station he considered beneath him? An amusing but unsatisfactory little morsel - what else? 

G’Kar chased the thought and it led him to a frenzied series of memories of Mollari’s ascension through the Centauri court. Here, the tint of blood taunted him, drew him in insatiably. He saw faces he did not recognize, a parade of Centauri politicians and company men wreathed in fineries that produced in G’Kar the base urge to destroy, to rip apart all that expensive lace simply for the joy of taking it from them. But he realized, looking more closely through Mollari’s eyes, that he could speak their language, he could name all these faces, and with a little concentration, he could list a date of death or demotion for most; the unspoken bounties on their heads were paid not only in blood and gold, but in etiquette and allegiance.

Here, an aspiring patriarch of House Mollari, cleft with brutal efficiency from his ambition - there, a single woman pulling the strings of a hundred more, playing her courters and ladies-in-waiting like pawns against the men who would usurp her. It was in this world that Mollari was born and raised, these people that he was taught to survive. When G’Kar had learned the parts of a Centauri vulnerable to a blade, Mollari had learned the parts vulnerable to a word, sharpening the weapons he knew best. Yet he moved through the world as if animated by the tugging of strings by forces greater and unkind, unsatisfied with the place given to him, and without the strength to find another, and all around him were figures as listless as he.

Seeing the Centauri as a Centauri, G’Kar howled with laughter to find that a Narn’s cruelty could scarcely compare. His contempt for the collaborators on his world could only deepen - _this_ was the rotted, gilded world for which they betrayed everything. G’Kar’s own scorn for the images of Mollari’s memory blackened them, cold fire eating and curling up the edges of parchment. It rankled every sense in his body, made him shudder with a kind of piteous loathing, like witnessing the tortured breaths of a dying animal. 

G’Kar was as ravenous as he was repulsed, carving a path through Mollari’s thoughts as he struggled, through the brambles that tore at his skin as Mollari tried to block him out. “Get out,” Mollari shouted, frantically closing the paths that G’Kar ripped open. It was hurting him: hurting Mollari, hurting G’Kar, it was the same - G’Kar could feel the pain echoed through their link, and he could have gorged on it for the rest of his life, so rich and indulgent. “You don’t belong here!” he cried - and G’Kar laughed, for nothing could be more obvious. He stood on enemy ground, but he could not be harmed. 

“How does it feel, Mollari? To have control wrenched from your hands? To be hunted down in the place that should be safest- don’t _run_ , Mollari, there is nowhere to _go_!”

Mollari’s conscience screeched with voices, damned and dead in a discordant chorus of fear, hate, guilt, _guilt_ , so much guilt, so heavy it dragged him down, swallowed him entire. Mollari looked at his own hands and could not feel them clean, looked at his reflection and avoided his own eyes, but still he pressed on as though chained to his path. As G’Kar crashed through the walls of Mollari’s mind, his own recoiled from the intensity of the self-loathing and doubt that rushed forward with every new stone turned over, gnawing at him as though they were his own, and entwined with the wrongness was the blood, the blood so close and so strong-

His own thoughts began to bleed over the edges of his control. Panicked, lost in the dense maze of thoughts that were his and not his all at once, his mind reached for familiarity, struggling for all the Narns he had known; the fallen comrades, old lovers, old enemies, leaders, workmates, family, and he could not look away as their faces melted and contorted with grisly shapes into those of Centauri he had never met. He wrestled his memories away from the senseless thrash of Mollari’s mind as he, in turn, tried to fend off G’Kar’s assault. G’Kar caught a glimpse of his own face, worn with age and snarling in the throes of death. Gloved hands gripped at his throat - it had never happened, but the image bore the strength and conviction of memory, as though lived a hundred times, and G’Kar tried to follow it to its conclusion. But despite his panic, Mollari vanished the thought as if by habit, burying it deep even as G’Kar trailed its disturbingly familiar scent.

The blood lured G’Kar further in as he tasted again the acrid flavour of _guilt_ , guilt thumping a steady heartbeat, and he found he was approaching its source as if by magnetism. It deafened him, roared in his ears as he clawed his way through, not sure of what he was looking for, but knowing there must be more. He felt something, and reached and twisted and tore, and finally he felt Mollari’s grip weaken as he wrenched the truth from him. Finally, he revealed a face they both knew - a Human man. And with that face, a flood of feeling - Mollari’s or his own, he could not distinguish - so intense he was wracked with nausea.

“ _Mr. Morden_ ,” G’Kar felt his mouth shape the words, but the voice was not his. “ _If I may ask… what is the price for this help?_ ”

“ _No price, Ambassador._ ”

He reeled with the flurry of information that unraveled and followed: a death toll, a star map with a blackened streak staining a jagged border, and finally, a splendidly clear view of his own world from above as asteroids rained down on its surface - the hand of God decreeing callous judgment on unseen beasts below. And threading through it all, blood and guilt, standing on Mollari’s shoulders and digging its claws into his spine and forcing him to kneel.

“You… It was you, at the center of it all! The ones you’re working with-”

Mollari shrank, his psyche curled around him as one shying from a strike. “No, not anymore. It was a mistake,” he said, and G’Kar knew, seeing from the inside, that he believed himself. “It was a mistake…”

_WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT DO YOU WANT?_

The question echoed and shrieked in the endless halls of Mollari’s mind, encircling them both from the darkness. One of them had drawn the attention of powers beyond imagining. The other had been found wanting. 

G’Kar was hurtled into another memory, trembling with energy. He stood in a familiar hall in Green Sector, declared in a voice not his own: “ _I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want us to be what we used to be. I want it all back the way that it was!_ ” 

Through Mollari’s hearts, inhabiting this memory, G’Kar felt the force of conviction, felt decades of stagnant resignation thrown headlong into burning resolve. Mollari chose this moment, of all moments, to find his passion.

G’Kar reached deep and drew out his own memory, and he felt Mollari turn away, closing himself off. “Listen to me! Hear me, Mollari, as I have heard you,” he seethed. He forced Mollari’s mind open, pouring the words in molten and cruel, forcing him to witness. “ _I want justice. To suck the marrow from their bones, to grind their skulls to powder. To tear down their cities, blacken their sky, sow their ground with salt. To completely, utterly erase them!_ ”

Weighing each answer on a scale it was clear whose was heavier. What was vengeance, next to empire? Simple hate, next to avarice? What Mollari sought could only ever grow, consuming more and more in its wake. What unspeakable power would have been offered to G’Kar, if he had only had the initiative to ask for more? Would he have asked if he had known? 

They stood across each other in the cold, lifeless dark of Mollari’s mind. “For my short-sightedness, Mollari, they chose you. I asked for so little, next to you.” 

Mollari was frayed, pale white and grim with shock and pain, but he gathered himself one more time, with little else to hide. “I didn’t ask for this,” he said. “I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for anyone to die, not even you!”

“No. No, and perhaps that is worse. You could not stomach the price attached to the things you wanted.”

“And you, you would have asked outright for my head on a platter! You would have accepted ten thousand, a million Centauri lives as a matter of course! Does that make you right? Between our two, does that make your cause more true?”

“It makes mine honest, Mollari! It is what we have always had, and what you always lacked. We have been made to understand the cost of our freedom, and we have long accepted it. You would rather pretend that an empire’s roads can be paved with anything other than blood.”

“No,” Mollari shook his head disdainfully. “I have never been so naive.”

“But you never had to _see_. You are far more a killer than I; you simply refuse to gaze upon your dead. I have seen your ways,” G’Kar tapped a finger against his temple. “Seen them as you do. Duplicity and faithlessness, words to hide true deeds - the glorious way of the empire you want restored.”

“As if you have never struggled with your own kind,” Mollari scoffed. “How many assassination attempts have you survived, G’Kar? How many have you enacted? How many of your scars were left by other Narns? Perhaps you have been away from home a little too long, _Kha’Ri’Akar_ ,” he hissed his title with contempt. “You have forgotten your own ways.”

“We rid ourselves of those possessed by selfish ambition. Perhaps your Court could learn from us. Prune a few unhealthy leaves. But of course in your case the whole tree would need to be culled.”

“Is that what you tell yourself? That the wayward are selfish and you, selfless? What of your people who wanted industry on your planet - those who wanted the factories to stay open to gather our credits and ducats? They would have taken from us to better your society? All they wanted was to join the galaxy as a power with sure ground beneath them, to forestall any more needless deaths. But no - you were too proud, you said better your people starve than eat from our table!”

G’Kar barked a laugh. Even traitors like Na’Far could not move him - no Centauri could ever begin to shame him for the choices made on his homeworld, least of all the one whose choices had just been laid bare before him. “Empty damnation, from a man who would eat from the hands of greater power than his little mind can comprehend. There is no principle you would not bend, if it advanced you.”

“And how easily you claim principle, when the only true Narn interest is the one you decide! How easily you call us your killers and masters when you never hesitated to send your own people to their deaths after we left. Or did they simply _decide_ to die for you?”

“I would have died alongside them, if it were my place.”

“How convenient that your place appears to be an alien station in complete safety, then.”

G’Kar spat, his hands burning for blood. He gripped Mollari by the shoulders and shoved, hard. Mollari staggered a few steps and laughed, and the sound sent a shock of white-hot rage up G’Kar’s spine. “Very convincing, as usual. Do you know, you are the most articulate Narn I have ever known.”

It was the same, always the same - a Centauri wanted a Narn contained, manageable, and when they refused, they were scorned as beasts. They were too loud, too violent, too blunt, and here, in an unphysical space, free of his body, G’Kar began to truly realize how much of himself he had shed and pared down over the years - not just for the Centauri but for every alien who found his passion too much. He snarled a noise that no alien could understand, every inch of his soul bristling for expression, for vengeance, for satisfaction-

But Mollari had regained some composure, and now he stood tall, forcing G’Kar into the defensive. “I asked you a question, G’Kar. Each of your countrymen who starved while tilling the fields or quarrying the mines, did they all choose to die for you?”

G’Kar bared his teeth in a hiss. “None of it was for _me_. You cannot understand a society that operates by rules other than greed. Every day, every Narn was made to choose: a life, or a world. If it were not for your people, we would not have to make such decisions!”

“Yet you seem to have no issue deciding on their behalf.”

“I decide nothing alone! I am a single claw on the hand of our people, and we have made a fist,” G’Kar said, closing his own hand and imagined driving it through Mollari’s throat. “It was not of our own choice, but your people’s greed that we were made to close it. You would not understand that. You would never understand our sacrifice.”

Mollari laughed, a broken and despairing sound. “I wouldn’t? Look at me, G’Kar. Look at all of me.” He spread his arms, and G’Kar felt the walls of his mind lowering too, snatches of Mollari’s life flitting around them like glowing embers. Loveless marriage, passionless work, appointments accepted with dutiful dread. “I have decided nothing alone, in all my life. My role was written before I was even born. You have seen it all, and still believe that only you have ever made sacrifices? That blood is the worst thing that can be taken from you? Would you have given what I have given?”

G’Kar snarled with derision. “I could never have fallen into such a place where I was asked to give what you have given. We struggle for our world, not for ourselves.”

“Oh, spare me!” Mollari waved a hand dismissively. “It was no great love that drew your people together, it was hate. It was always hate, the only thing that could light a fire in your hearts.”

“And what is wrong with hate?” G’Kar roared, as much at Mollari as all the others who had tried to cow him into shame. “What else is left when you have been debased as we have? Hate kept our hearts alive when you deprived us of everything else You have never known what it is to have a true cause. I have felt all that guilt in you, Mollari, yet you seem not to realize that you could have chosen another path.”

“So could you! But you, you noble beast, you shackled yourself to the lead of a vengeful cause and then cried injustice for having to pull it!”

“There is no other cause! Your people made sure of that!”

“Perhaps then you should thank us. Who are you without us?”

“You dare-!” He reached for the image of Mollari, who flinched but did not pull away. 

“You know your own histories, don’t you? You fell upon each other like animals before we came to your world. You lived as primitives. Without us, what would have pulled your society together? Where would your Kha’Ri be? Where would you be?” 

“I would be _free_!” he howled, with the blood invading every sense, pulsing under every inch of his skin. “I would be beneath the sky and before the sea; there would be _life_ on my world again!”

“You don’t really know what that means. You have never lived except where we have given you reason.” Mollari stood impassively, a cold smile on his face as G’Kar gripped threateningly into his collar. “I understand that as you never can. So do as you will, G’Kar. Strike me down! We are both already dead.”

“I can do worse than kill you in here,” he seethed.

“Do it, then! You have come this far, why not farther? Kill me and damn yourself! Sate that bloodlust for a little while, until you find yourself empty of anything else,” he hissed, bringing his fists to his chest, and G’Kar’s mind was on fire, howling and clawing at the inside of his skull and down every nerve in his body to kill him, kill him, _kill him kill him, do it, do it, do it now now now now-_

“How desperately you wish to find me broken like you are,” G’Kar gasped, shoving Mollari away from himself. “But I am alive, and you have not earned my blood!” The hate raged in him, desperate for the gratification of ripping a claw across that pale throat. Churning inside him it weighted his very soul thick and molten hot, a black well of unforgiving grief, dragging him ever downward into something waiting, something familiar.

Finding a reprieve, Mollari took the chance and ran, the walls of his mind slamming down in place as he retreated. G’Kar could have caught him, could have hurt him, could have split his skull in two and drank down every drop of the blood and memory that poured out, but instead he let go, his limbs too heavy and tired to reach out again. The ground dissolved beneath him and he was falling, he was letting himself fall, he was letting the fury of their minds disentangle as he sank into pure blackness through a void of gravity or air or feature, falling back into his own mind-

He landed without impact, without suddenness, the earth formed beneath his feet. The darkness warmed and breathed around him, shadows softened and waving as if cast by candlelight, by paired moons at dusk, by flickering lanterns lining underground halls. He breathed deeply, like a man newly returned to atmosphere, trying to find the ground as his mind reeled, the shrieking pain ebbing into white noise.

All this time, Mollari had been so easy to hate, easier even than most Centauri because he was close at hand, and because it seemed natural, with the two of them sitting as representative of their wholes. G’Kar had cast Mollari as the embodiment of Centauri evil, a cruel and vapid creature who wanted only to deal pain. Perhaps he was those things. But above all, Mollari was just a man of paltry station and grand ambition. He was an appetite outweighing conscience. The realization was painfully small, almost meaningless in the scope of the war that loomed over them all now. G’Kar had come for answers, because he had nowhere else to find them, and Mollari’s hands were bloody and bare. But the true answers would never lay within a single man, spinning one gear in a great machine, set in motion a century or more prior. If the Shadows had not found Mollari, they would have found another - there was no deep truth within him whose exposure to the light would answer the despair that the Narns had cried out to the universe for a hundred years.

The Narns had known, G’Kar had always known, that the Centauri came for the most banal of things: resource and labour. They had not come for hate, or death, or the tears of four generations of slaves. Yet they had taken them anyway, pinned as just a few more jewels on the extravagant dresses of empire. There were other worlds, those who had not resisted as long or as successfully as Narn had. None of them were the ends, just the means. It meant so little to them.

And it had become so twisted, in the minds of those who were not there. When G’Kar came to live among the aliens, he saw his people become synonymous with the brutality of their struggle, tooth and claw become their only feature. Over and over the Humans and Minbari seemed to say of their war, their noblest cause: they fight because they hate, and because they hate, they will fight forever. It was spoken like simple truth, like a fact of chemical balances: blood was the fixed output of the mixture of their two compounds. One did not speak of motive, of system, of exploitation. Only hate.

The Minbari wielded their threats of genocide with poise, held their heads high because their cause had been holy, and the Narns, merely hungry. But the Humans - they of all should recognize the face of conquest. The Narns had been the ones to supply their dwindling cause when they stood minutes from extinction, yet the Humans remained idle as Narn were conquered again. And then, standing above the rubble, they shook their heads and told them they had brought their fate upon themselves. 

G’Kar was forced to survive, to live and witness the callousness of those who considered themselves just, forced to hear their decree and grovel for pittance. He had learned to be small, to be accepting, to be grateful; he had learned to breathe alien air, eat alien food, understand alien thoughts. Here, free of his body, free of the station, he felt his every inch cramped and crowded and cut down, desperate to stretch out and take its true shape.

It was maddening, to have come all this way, to have held all the sacrifices of his world in his scarred hands, only to be told again and again that he was as much as fault as the ones who had bound him in chains the moment he drew his first breath. It reduced him by inches, blurred the memory of his world that once burned so bright in his mind, sapped the colour from the hope that kept him alive this long. It took the unkillable love that raged in his heart and called it hate, called it all hate, nothing but petulant, ungracious, spiteful hate, and told him that hate was poison, that his hate was the worst thing he could inflict upon the world, that his cause was the hateful grudge of the conquered, that his hate would be the thing that ended him, that hate would eat him alive, told him again and again and again until he almost believed it himself- 

“ _Enough!_ ” The voice called to him through the frenzy of his thoughts, familiar and unknown at once.

“Who’s there?” He reached out. Someone reached back - not Mollari, his presence was unmistakable. The darkness closed in all around him, but he was unafraid in the moment of pure silence.

“I am who I have always been.” 

He was hit first by the smell - it was Narn, as he had first known it. The farm. The tall grasses. The bitter earth. The wind, wafting in decay from one direction, industry from the next. 

When his eyes focused he saw what he knew he would see: an old Narn, swaying in that diseased air, hanging from a stubborn, half-dead tree and half-dead himself. He had not shied from this sight as a child, and as a man he faced it with nothing more than weariness. He had gone on after this memory, loved and lost so many more - the first was barely significant in having been the first.

“Father.”

“It is too late for me, G’Kar. It is not too late for you. Honour my name.”

“You never showed me how.” G’Kar turned his eyes to the ground beneath them, sparse grasses appearing in the dream-vision as he focused his sight on the earth. He longed so badly to touch it in the real world, to return even to the husk of a home, even a shadow of the righteous glory they built for themselves. “I learned. I killed. For you. For all of us who could not.”

“All you see is death, G’Kar. We are a dying people. So are the Centauri. Obsessed with each other’s death until death is all we can see, and all we deserve.”

G’Kar looked up into his father’s dispassionate face, gaunt with hunger and lined with age. He had never seen it any other way. “Is that it? Did you deserve this?”

“Worse will come to all if we do not lay down our grudges.”

G’Kar recoiled and turned away. As he turned, he was confronted again with that face he barely recalled - long decades separated them across the haze of childhood recollection. Yet with it before him now, he seemed to know it well. His father stood before him - a small man, though G’Kar did not remember him being so. Perhaps he would have stood taller if he had gorged on the victory of their freedom as G’Kar had in his youth. But instead he was one of many who had never once seen the sky free of Centauri ships, whose gaze had been forced down all his life, until his stature was made small to match. 

“We did not begin this war, father. You knew that as well as I.”

“But will you continue it? Until there are no more Narns and no more Centauri? If both sides are dead, no one will care which side deserves the blame. It no longer matters who started it.”

“It is the only thing that matters!” G’Kar growled. “How can we have justice if we forget it?”

His father shook his head sadly. “It only matters who is suffering.”

“We are suffering! We have suffered for the galaxy, for so long, you along the rest. They mean to do it to us again! Does that mean nothing to you?” 

“A great war is coming, G’Kar. You have seen its signs. Many more than our own will suffer if you do not learn to look beyond yourself. The lessons and sacrifices of our people must not be in vain - you must learn from them, and teach their lessons to the others.”

“They do not listen! I warned them! I warned them about the Shadows. About Mollari. And what did they do? They sheltered him. They kept him at their table and cast me aside at his behest,” G’Kar spat. It stung, then, and it stung now, a fitting echo of the contempt his world faced from a dispassionate galaxy. “I spoke, and I waited for the truth to shine on my side. But they care little for it. What would they learn from me?”

“They will learn as you have learned. Our war is the great war in microcosm: lightness and shadow.”

“Our war? Our war is grown from the what the Centauri wanted. Power and wealth, with no sympathy for the cost.” G’Kar frowned with a curious thought. “What do the Shadows want?

“ _Do not ask that!_ ” came the answer, shrieked with a sudden force, echoing in G’Kar’s mind. “There is no matter of _want_. They only destroy, and they will spread their destruction to every corner of the galaxy. You have seen it. The heat of evil has reached Narn before, and now it reaches out to burn the rest.”

G’Kar shook his head - this was wrong, all wrong. “Perhaps the Shadows can want only for destruction, but the Centauri do not act simply for evil’s sake. They came for the land beneath us, and the strength to exploit it. Their evil lives in their need for expansion. Dominion.”

Centauri evil was the consequence of a greater want for base things, not the thing itself. To misunderstand that was to misunderstand the path to liberation: they had won once by making the cost of wanting greater than its prize. That was how they would win again. He walked away from his father, and again, he appeared in front of him, some few paces away. “You don’t know them, father, not as I have! You died knowing nothing but the earth you tilled."

“And now the opportunity approaches to act on all you have learned. You recognize the nexus of forces here, forces you can affect if you work with the others.”

“The _others!_ ” G’Kar repeated with disdain. “Where were the _others_ when our world was beaten down for a century? When we rebuilt ourselves from ash? When it burned down again? What do we owe them now?”

“Nothing. But you know the value of sacrifice better than any. If each acts selfishly, none will be saved.”

“It is not selfishness to demand our justice! It is not selfishness to find the riches gotten at our expense and take our share!” G’Kar hissed, his posture hunching - his father did not respond in kind, standing with unnatural stillness. “What kind of Narn are you, asking me to lay down our righteousness?” 

He reached out for the image of his father, intending to strike fairly against his chest. Instead his hand dissolved through, not even making contact as he had with Mollari. He drew back, suspicious. “Who are you?”

The figure was frozen still.

“Who are you?” It asked in turn.

G’Kar stared at the facsimile of his father, and though his body told him to fight, he was compelled to answer. “I am G’Kar. I am the last of the Kha’Ri.”

His father’s expression did not change as he asked again, “ _Who are you?_ ” in a new, alien voice that echoed from every corner of the space, that seemed to grow from inside him. The question carved into him, burning, searching, and he felt it twisting and turning with relentless curiosity, reaching into every corner of his mind.

“I…” he closed his eyes, finding his answer. “I am a servant of my world. I hold all our pain and all our hope until one claims me in turn.”

The figure stared, and G’Kar was left with the impression of being measured.

“You belong to more than your world. You are more than the earth and blood that bore you, more than the struggle that spurred your people to great heights.” The figure seemed to loom over him and envelop him in its presence, and it spoke in a language that transcended sound, reverberating instead in his very mind. “The forces of light coalesce around you, and you can join in their endeavour if you surrender the smallness of your own.”

G’Kar shook his head. “You don’t understand. If you were my father - if you were a Narn, you would know. Where conflict ends, cooperation can begin. But no sooner. As long as my world is in struggle, so am I.”

“Do you not tire, G’Kar? Do you not seek an end to your endless pursuit, your hunger to deliver pain equal to your own? Will you choose death over life, pain over healing?”

He laughed, hollow and weary. “Pain is the only constant of my people; the choice is how to spend it. I have chosen my world. I will choose it again and again until it is the last choice I make. I belong to my people. _That_ is who I am.”

As he spoke, he felt his limbs growing heavy. He felt the earth calling to him, reaching for his bones and clinging to him thickly. He was pulled to his knees through the wisps of the imagined fields, and leaning forward he felt the crumb of dry soil under his palms. It was unreal - formed directly from his recollection, it was too expected, too imprecise to really be there.

The voice said, “You have journeyed far, looked beyond your own world; why do you refuse to see?”

“I see; I have seen so much, and it is a curse,” G’Kar gasped through shallow breaths, as the earth felt out for him, claimed him, leached the strength from his hands, his knees, his feet - everywhere he touched the ground he grew colder and slower as he was beckoned ever downward. “To see and not be seen. It is the worst thing I have ever known. They watched, they all watched as we burned, but they all refused… to _see_ …”

“You prayed for your place and it has been shown to you, G’Kar. You have seen the truth of the war to come. And you must continue to witness, no matter how painful, and reflect the truth, no matter how it breaks you.”

“I will never… break,” he panted, as the life was drained from him.

“Then will you take your place?”

The earth reached up to him, twined itself around his arms and reached along his spine, into his heart. It pulled him down with the tireless force of purpose and as his face met the ground it invaded his mouth, his nostrils, choked all the struggle from him until he was wordless, shapeless in place. It told him to be still - to rest, and he felt himself atomized, seeping out into the soil that first bore him. It felt like belonging. It felt like death. And from above, around, inside - the voice:

“Your sight is not a curse, G’Kar. It is salvation. But not your own.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This very special chapter title brought to you by Ewan Maccoll and Peggy Seeger's '[White Wind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mC-51mXMo4&t=2m7s)'


	12. HAVE YOU KNOWN THE SICKNESS BORNE ON THE WIND

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen is called down to the clinic. He and G'Kar share a thought.

Stephen’s Link chirped again, on the emergency line this time, bypassing the sleep setting and buzzing directly against his skull through the abutment for his hearing aid. Abruptly and unhappily awake, he rolled over in his bed with a groan, feeling a dull ache spreading its way across his lower back. “Lights.” 

He reached for his hearing aid, attaching it before jabbing the talk button on his Link. “Franklin. This better be good.”

“Sorry Doctor,” came the tinny voice in his aid. “But this, uh… well. It’s good, in a sense. You better get down here.”

“Adrien? What the hell couldn’t wait until morning? You know how late I was in last night-” He blinked a few times to take in the time - 05h32. Well, he’d have to be awake soon anyway, but considering he had only been in bed for three hours prior, he was sore about missing the extra time.

“Yeah, I know. Look, uh, it’s G’Kar?”

Stephen paused. “What about him?”

“Okay, so… he just crashed in through here a minute ago? He’s, ah, he’s kind of fucked up. Not physically, I mean.” Doctor Cheron was not eloquent at the best of times - if B5 weren’t so short-staffed, and Stephen had his way, they’d still be a resident under regular supervision. “He’s not really speaking in full sentences and he’s even freaking out the Narns a bit, but I don’t want to call security on him or anything. Oh, and, um, I think he beat the shit out of Mollari. Who he also brought in. Dumped him right on the floor.”

“He… what?”

“Look, I said you’d better get down here.”

Stephen sat up fully, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, then massaged over toward his temples. “Alright. Is Mollari stable?”

“Yeah. Looks like he got thrown around a bit, cuts and scrapes and a couple broken ribs. But he’s hit his head pretty hard, won’t know the extent of trauma until we can get a proper scan.”

Stephen attached the Link to his hand and stood up, making straight for his desk and opening the top drawer. He grabbed two stims, and took one as he talked. “I’ll come to Downbelow first. Send Mollari up to Medlab 1 and call up whichever Centauri we have on morning shift. Feler I think? Get Ladorni on the line too. He’ll lose his shit and I want to be on the other side of the station when it happens.”

“Alright. I’ll give Hobbes the heads-up. Thanks, Franklin. Sorry about waking you.”

“No big deal.” Stephen smiled flatly at his reflection in the mirror beside the door. He rolled his shoulders and shook out his hands as he felt the stim kicking in, letting him breathe, bringing his mind into focus.

—

When he arrived at the clinic in Downbelow, Mollari had already been moved. “Vir was waiting with Ladorni upstairs,” Adrien explained as Stephen put on his white coat. “You’re right, Ladorni’s losing his fucking mind up there - spare you the details though. Vir got clocked too. He says G’Kar stormed in, knocked him out, took off with Mollari.”

“The hell was he thinking? They’re going to try to extradite him again.”

“Like I said, I don’t think he’s… in his right mind? Look, it’s better if you just… uh-” they led him to the small patient bay, where in the corner of the clinic two Narns orderlies were standing behind a makeshift barrier of gurneys. In the corner was G’Kar, pacing and muttering and gesturing broadly. The lights were on dim, presumably an effort to keep him calm. “I dunno, he keeps talking, but not enough for anybody to really piece it together. It’s not exactly crisis mode or anything, but… what do you think?”

“Did you call Na’Toth down here?”

“Couldn’t get through - I think she might be off station? And the broody guy, Ta’Lon - I’m not sure where to get a hold of him but I put a word out. Hope he shows soon.”

“Right, well… nothing else for it.” Stephen started walking toward G’Kar, his arms outspread at his sides with a triage kit in one hand. “Um, hey. G’Kar?” 

As he approached, he saw splashes of what he could only assume was blood, spattered dark across G’Kar’s clothes and face. He didn’t respond to his name as he continued to pace, and Stephen came closer, gesturing for the orderlies to stay in place. Even to Stephen’s untrained ear he could tell that he was jumping from thought to thought in muttered G’Kham-et, with none of the characteristic melody of the language. His breathing seemed normal, but Stephen would have to get closer to evaluate anything usefully. “G’Kar. Can you hear me? Do you know who I am?”

“Do you know who I am?” G’Kar echoed, still pacing.

“G’Kar. Listen to me. I’m Stephen Franklin.You’re in the clinic in Downbelow. But you knew that already - you brought Mollari here, because he was hurt. Because you’re hurt. Isn’t that right?” Stephen pushed aside one of the gurneys and it gave a feeble squeak. When G’Kar tilted his head, Stephen could see that his pupils were blown out, ringed by a mere sliver of his natural red. He set the triage kit down for a moment, inching closer.

“Hurt, oh. Yes.” He stopped dead in his tracks and his eyes locked, for a moment, on Stephen’s. 

The clinic seemed to fall into total quiet, though that could not be true - the hum of clinic machinery, the voices from outside the thin walls, the drone of the station’s guts all working and churning around them in Downbelow- they all seemed to disappear, and Stephen was magnetized to the blackness of G’Kar’s eyes as his own vision darkened at the edges. 

“You,” G’Kar murmured, and it was the only thing Stephen could hear. “You know.”

“What… do I know?” His own voice seemed far away. Everything seemed far away and drifting farther - his hands limp at his sides, pulling toward the ground away from him, the clinic walls stretching out into space, time slowly melting out of comprehension. But G’Kar was there. Perceivable.

“Sacrifices.”

Stephen’s mouth felt dry. He was distantly aware that they were being watched, but he was hypnotized all the same. He felt something he had only felt once or twice before - he felt someone in his mind. It was more than a surface scan by a practiced telepath, which more resembled peeking through curtains than entering a room. This, by comparison, was someone crashing through the walls, clumsy and curious, and so unmistakably G’Kar.

“I look in you. See you looking,” G’Kar said with a dazed smile. “Seeing you seeing me.”

“Ah-! G’Kar- you-” he stammered, fighting for control of his mind as G’Kar rummaged through. He wasn’t a telepath and had no mental defenses; he could barely tell what was being looked at of his own volition or G’Kar’s. He was rushed through glimpses of the recent past in knotted threads of association - long nights in the office alone, summed in the corner of the terminal he always stared at when he was thinking; the impersonal sound of a body bag zipping up; the heat of G’Kar’s room as five crescent-shaped welts were gripped into his arm; the quickening of his heart at a flash of sharp teeth- and intertwined were memories not his own, embodied in G’Kar’s alien mind, in language and physicality Stephen did not understand, emotion clinging thick and bitter to every little crag and crevice- he saw Na’Toth, he saw Narn, he tasted blood and grief and joy so intertwined they seemed to be the same-

Suddenly, he felt pain. Not physical pain, but something transmitted and echoed and unreal, cutting through like a laser between his eyes and down his spine. He could think of nothing, remember nothing, cleaned out and electrified white-hot in every nerve in his body, and he thought to cover his face, to fall to the ground and curl up around himself - but he was rooted exactly where he stood, unable to move. “Stop!” He couldn’t feel his mouth moving, didn’t know if he was making a sound, but the pain reached into his teeth, his tongue, his fingers burning up from the inside- “G’Kar- you- you’re hurting me-”

“Hurting,” G’Kar gasped, and suddenly the pain was gone, the sounds were back, his vision returned, and Stephen staggered back a few steps, the relief of reality rushing heavily into his lungs. Just like that, it was over - they were apart, the release of his mind as sudden as its capture. As G’Kar turned away Stephen felt an ache deep in his chest, an acute hollowness following where the pain had carved its way through him; a sea parted before closing back in on itself.

He rubbed at his forehead, feeling for nonexistent physical marks of the scan. Getting his bearings, he glanced around at the staff, who had moved in around them, looking concerned and confused. Adrien leaned in close from the side, gripping his arm and saying something indiscernible. He turned to them and their lips read, “-happened … standing there like- … okay?”

He shook his head, waving them all away. “I’m fine. I’m fine-” he looked back to G’Kar, who was crowding himself into the corner. “G’Kar? How did you do that?”

“Mm,” came the answer. “Testing. Testing…”

“Oh.” Stephen watched as G’Kar slumped against the wall, his expression vacant. He wondered if he reeled, too, from whatever it was they just shared, or if- “Oh, shit.” He snapped back to life with his realization, turning to look over his shoulder at Adrien. “It’s Dust - that dealer the Psi Cops came after, you remember? G’Kar must’ve got his claws in it somehow. He just… well, he _tried_ to deep scan me. I don’t think he knows how much energy it takes. He’s exhausting himself.”

Adrien frowned as Stephen opened the triage kit and unfastened the scanner from its holster. “What do we do with a Narn high off his ass on Dust? We barely have a profile put together for Humans.” They scratched their head. “Probably shredded Mollari’s brain like lettuce, huh?”

“Don’t get your hopes up.” They both turned to look as G’Kar began thumping his head heavily against the wall. “Hey- don’t-” He reached out and grabbed G’Kar by the arm and pulled him away. 

When G’Kar looked at him again, he made eye contact with sudden, sharp lucidity that made Stephen’s breath catch in his throat. “Dr. Franklin?” He looked down where Stephen was holding his arm, then around at the clinic. He leaned in conspiratorially, clasping his hand over Stephen’s. “Did I kill him?” he whispered urgently.

“Mollari? No, but he’s unconscious. We sent him up to Medlab 1. What happened?”

He nodded as he looked again around the room, his expression fading back into an unfocused dimness. “I’m… sit?” Without waiting for a reply, G’Kar let go and crumpled to the floor in an ungainly pile. “My head…” he groaned softly, shielding his eyes with his hand.

“Yeah, I bet.” Stephen knelt down beside him, moving the collar of his jacket aside to read for a preliminary reading. He pressed the scanner against the suede-like skin of G’Kar’s neck and let it read for a moment. “Your heart rate is a little over, but it seems like you’re coming down alright. When did you dose?”

“Mmnhhh,” said G’Kar.

“Alright,” Stephen sighed, pushing himself off the floor. “Adrien, R’Thle, just get him into a bed for now and monitor his vitals. Keep him warm and hydrated and get a telepath down here to do a surface scan. I should get up to Medlab 1 so Lilian doesn’t have to deal with Ladorni on her own.”

“You think he’s gonna be okay?” Adrien was kneeling beside G’Kar, who had covered his face with his hands and was grumbling to himself in G’Kham-et. 

“As long as he doesn’t try to deep dive in anybody else’s brain. Wore himself out plenty with mine, I think.”

“He find anything interesting in there?” Adrien teased.

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Just old case files and lab data.”

“Oh, sure.” Adrien and R’Thle hauled G’Kar up by the armpits, easing him into the closest gurney. “I guess that’s between you and him. Though I doubt he’ll remember any of it tomorrow,” they added with a sigh, looking down at G’Kar in the stretcher sympathetically. Stephen nodded, though he found himself wondering otherwise.

—

“Doc-tor Frank-i-lin!” Doctor Ladorni cried, jabbing his finger in the air to enunciate- “This is. Out-rage-ous!” The small, fastidiously dressed Centauri was blocking the door to the operating theatre, within which Mollari was being prepared for surgery. Beside him stood Vir, his arm in a sling and his eyes downcast.

“I’m sure it is, but don’t you have more important matters to attend to?” Stephen cast a meaningful look into the room, which only seemed to incense Ladorni further.

“Don’t tell me what to do -you are always-” he searched for a word, waving his hands in the air. “Inter-ference!”

“Doctor, you have one patient on this station. I take care of the other two-hundred thousand. Frankly, I don’t have the time to interfere with yours!”

“You always-!” Ladorni hissed. “You must bring him. Here! Or I will take security and get him!”

“Not on your _life_!” Stephen hissed back. _Or mine_. “G’Kar is under our protection - the only reason he’s not being treated here is for his own safety, but you should take that as a boon for yourself.” Stephen did, however, privately entertain the idea of bringing G’Kar up to Medlab 1 and letting him wreak some havoc, if that was what Ladorni really wanted.

“I demand him here! Arrested! He attacked my patient, a threat to all Centauri. He is- he is-” Flustered and exasperated with English, he turned to Vir and spoke quickly in Villisi.

Vir grimaced. “A… beast,” he said, quietly. “More or less.” When Ladorni continued, Vir’s mouth set in a firm line and he refused to translate further.

“I’m sure he’ll stand trial when he’s well enough,” Stephen gritted out through his teeth. “But I will decide when, because he’s _my_ patient. And this is _my_ Medlab.” He crossed his arms, having run out of patience for Ladorni at least two years prior. Enough was enough. “Mollari has access to our facilities as a patient, but you- you don’t even work for the Xeno Board. And that means you are only here on my say-so, _Doctor_. I’d suggest you try not to lose it.”

Ladorni spat out a vigorous ‘pah!’ and turned to Vir as he launched into a spirited tirade in Villisi, making a variety of abrupt hand gestures and staring daggers at Stephen whenever convenient - his neat white coif of hair bounced vigorously as he bobbed and shook his head. Stephen caught the sound of his own name, Villisified into something like “Frenilin”, and the word for ‘doctor.’ But mostly, he watched Ladorni’s lips move in unfamiliar patterns. Vir listened with exasperated patience and dutiful nods, shifting his weight uncomfortably until Ladorni finally sulked back into the operating room with a last snide glare at Stephen. 

Vir sighed, walking with Stephen away from the door. “Dr. Ladorni says that he will be filing a formal complaint with the advisory council and advocating for the G’Kar’s release into ‘our’ custody regardless of your, ah, influence? He also… well, he made a number of comments about your… sympathies, and the inappropriateness of having them while in charge of Medlab. I’m sure he wishes he could make you understand certain… comments, but I won’t repeat them.”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “What does he care how Medlab is run? He only comes up here to annoy the Board doctors. I can take Centauri patients with Feler or Lenitto just fine, because neither of them is tied to a retainer.”

“He doesn’t have much else to do.”

“He could try, oh, I don’t know, working? As a doctor, even? He doesn’t even treat you, does he?”

“Oh, no. I see Lenitto usually. If I see anyone. Ladorni is on the Court medical board, I think he spends most of his time doing policy work. And drinking. He’s just… old-fashioned," Vir said with a noncommittal wave of his unbroken hand.

 _He's just an old bastard_ , Stephen thought. “Anyway, he knows full well Sheridan is never going to hand G’Kar over, though I’m flattered he thinks I have such a big say in things on the station.”

They moved down the quiet hallway to the viewing window that overlooked the operating suite. The Centauri surgical team was accustomed to Ladorni’s fretful interruptions, and they went about their work efficiently. Vir watched intently, the uncharacteristic frown setting deep on his brow, the bruise around his eye drawing his expression even darker.

“He’ll be alright, Vir. The Centauri telepaths said no permanent damage, and his wounds are treatable. They’ll have him out of here by tomorrow.”

“I know, but who knows what really… happened. They were gone for hours.”

Stephen said nothing, looking into the room at Mollari, who stared vacantly at the ceiling. He had gained consciousness and was deemed responsive, but remained in a daze. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Vir said, seeming genuinely unsure.

“I mean G’Kar attacked you too. You should be taking it easy.”

Vir laughed nervously. “Well, I’m fine. Just, you know-” he bobbed his broken arm a bit in its sling. “Besides,” he said, his smile evaporating as his gaze focused back on Mollari through the window. “He didn’t come for me.”

“Did he try to- um. Read you?”

Vir shrugged. “I think so. But he lost interest. I suppose I wasn’t that interesting.”

“I’m still… I’m sorry you got hurt.”

Vir didn’t respond. Mollari was fitted with a respirator, and the nurses attached and tuned a series of readouts. Ladorni was pacing as he dictated instructions to the Centauri translator at his side. The lead surgeon nodded occasionally, probably giving him reassurances that all was going according to his word. 

“I only ever wanted to help,” Vir said, so quietly Stephen almost missed it.

“You… mean G’Kar?”

Vir put his hand to the glass, feeling along the frame. “Every Narn. I’m trying to make it right. But there’s so little I can do from where I am. Londo, the Court, the whole damn Republic…”

“I know the feeling.”

“But you’re not on the wrong side,” Vir laughed humourlessly, shaking his head. “You haven’t seen what it’s like. Even the best I can do is… it’s drops in the ocean.”

Stephen frowned. Last he’d heard, Mollari had shuffled Vir off to some dead-ending office work on Minbar. To hear Michael tell it, it was the final nail in the coffin of Mollari’s self-imposed isolation, severing the last connection to the last person who still cared. Stephen hadn’t given it much thought. He had never given Vir much thought, to be honest. But now, seeing the seriousness, the intent in his expression, he thought maybe Vir was used to being underestimated. Maybe he’d learned to use it.

“It can feel like that here, too,” he said carefully. “Just one patient at a time. You have to believe it matters.”

“Do you?”

Automatically, he answered, “Yes. What’s the point otherwise?”

Vir glanced over, politely skeptical. “I suppose it’s easier when doing the right thing is your job.”

Stephen cracked a weary smile. “It’s not that simple. Everybody has to make choices.” What choices was Vir making, he wondered, looking out of the cold windows of a Minbari ambassadorial office? He hoped they were important ones. Good ones, too.

“Londo told me once…” he began, his expression vague with recollection. He fidgeted at a button on his shirt and his mouth moved around unspoken words, as though testing them out before putting them to use. “He said everyone, eventually, has a day where you look in the mirror and realize that you’re never going to be more than what you see there. He said-” 

Vir exhaled, turning abruptly away from Mollari’s prone form beyond the window. “Well, nevermind what he said. I decided I _was_ going to be more than that. Because there are too many damn mirrors around.”

Stephen winced sympathetically. “If that’s what gets you through… sure, it’s better to feel like you can live with yourself. But it’s not about us, in the end,” he said, crossing his arms. “Doesn’t really matter if we feel good about it or not.”

“I suppose not.”

“Not that you shouldn’t be appreciated for… a good deed,” he added vaguely. Vir had probably learned a lot from Mollari. Ways to turn bureaucracy in his favour. Ways to hide in plain sight and disguise his intent. It was a skillset Stephen had very little talent in. “But it helps to keep the big picture in mind - and we’re barely in it. Just playing our little part.”

Vir’s brow knit so tense Stephen worried he’d burst a vein. He sighed, looking down at the sling that strapped his arm to his chest. When he spoke again, it was in a small, uncertain voice. “Why am I glad he hurt me? Because I feel like that’s my… part? Like I deserved it?”

“Hey,” Stephen said, setting a hand on Vir’s shoulder and trying to make eye contact. “Don’t talk like that. You don’t need to do some kind of… penance. Alright? Least of all from G’Kar getting high and trying to settle a grudge.”

He frowned at Stephen. “Doesn’t it ever feel like… it’s wrong, to not hurt they way they’re hurting?”

Stephen held back a wince - of course, Vir hadn't meant it as a jab. “There’s enough pain to go around, Vir. It can… it can suck you in, trying to empathize with everyone who hurts, trying to feel what they feel. But getting yourself hurt doesn’t help anyone.”

“What if it helped him? What if all G’Kar needed was to take it out on someone? Someone who didn’t want to hurt him back,” he added, with an instinctive glance into the operating room.

“Damn it, it doesn’t matter what G’Kar wants, don’t think of yourself that way - you’re not a punching bag, alright?” Stephen held Vir sternly by the shoulders until he got a weak nod of agreement. “Whatever G’Kar needs… I dunno. I hope he found something when he came for Mollari. But I think he needs a lot more than catharsis.”

“He needs Narn to be free,” Vir said miserably. “And I can’t- nobody can just give that to him.”

“You don’t get to give everyone everything they need, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter! If I felt that way about every patient I’d never get anything done. Every year- hell, every day I can keep someone healthy and alive, that’s a win.”

“G’Kar’s not just any patient though, is he?”

Caught off guard, Stephen felt his expression go blank, a defense mechanism that he had never been able to shake. “…What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s- you know, he’s really still the ambassador, even if he doesn’t have the title. What happens to him is like metaphor for the rest.”

“…Right,” Stephen exhaled. “I suppose. Do you think that way about Mollari?”

Vir’s lips twisted with dismay. “I don’t know what to think about Londo anymore. He never wanted to be anyone’s representative but his own. But he always said he wanted what was best for Centauri… Great Maker, I don’t know. Maybe he really does speak for all of us. I would… I would hate that,” he smiled grimly. “I guess that’s why I keep trying.”

“You can’t be someone else’s conscience for long. Eventually he’ll have to listen to his own.”

They both looked over as the lead surgeon pinged them through the console, giving them a nod before activating the privacy screen. The window frosted over opaque, and a display hummed to life on its surface, showing a bare summary of the operation in progress. 

With Mollari in the capable hands of the surgeons, Stephen tried to send Vir back to his room to rest, at least until the operation was over, and when he stubbornly refused, sent him to the waiting room instead. Stephen stood in the empty hallway alone, listening to nothing but the soft tones of clinic machinery.

The stim he had taken early in the morning was now beginning to wear off, and he felt the telltale ache creeping in behind his eyes. Looking for a reprieve, he leaned his forehead against the cool window where Mollari’s vitals displayed in Villisi and English, and he closed his eyes against the flickering pale blue and gold. He thought about G’Kar. He tried to recollect the memories of their shared vision - but they were indistinct, flashes of life incomprehensible without the mind that threaded them through with meaning. But the pain, screaming through his nervous system when their minds touched - that was crystal clear; a cleansing fire that burned through them both in a flash.

Stephen had always been the type to poke a curious finger into his own tender bruises and cuts, and his sisters joked that he had become a doctor just to poke at other people’s. There was enough pain to go around. But he was compelled to reach out, to feel out its shape and discern its heft. Life couldn’t be learned without pain, he knew, showing a person the boundaries of their abilities and tolerances, and he wanted to walk the perimeter. In moments of hubris, he thought that perhaps he wanted to solve it. But in the end, the best he could do was tame it.

How did it sit in G’Kar, he wondered: an old and familiar companion or always raw, always new and replenishing? In Stephen, it was as a tide that waxed and waned, at times relenting and at times uncontrollable, but never apart from him and never still. And he had felt it, for a moment, breaking over unknown shores. There was enough pain to go around. But it existed as landscape with infinite qualities and character, and despite everything, he wanted to know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pt 2 of chapter titles from 'White Wind.'


	13. SIXTY DAYS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'Kar receives a sentence, and writes a few.

G’Kar’s sentence had come as a shock. 

Four hours after leaving the clinic in Downbelow, and two days after the events for which he was being sentenced, he stood passively in the quiet courtroom, awaiting the judge’s decree. He was fine. He felt fine, and the strangers’ thoughts he had scoured in his Dust-addled state drifted in and out like a particularly striking dream, but no more. His memory was clear, but glassed over with a veneer of unreality. 

Still, he remembered. He remembered going to Mollari’s quarters, remembered wracking his mind, remembered the cracking of dried blood under his claws. He remembered, and admitted remembering, and for this he was being tried.

These matters were handled strangely, among Humans. He had been briefed, long ago, on the rather cruel machinations of what they called criminal justice. He had attended hearings on behalf of Narns on the station for minor offenses, working either as counsel or translator (and always advocating for their return to Narn judiciary). But he could no more fathom their court system than he could their conventions for naming musical genres.

Garibaldi had come to him before the trial and told him that his trial would be efficient and that the outcome would be mild, with Sheridan making a direct appeal on his behalf. He had meant that as consolation, but G’Kar could not discern how, exactly, he was meant to feel better knowing that his case would be given little consideration, and that their court system favoured the well-connected. 

He did not dread punishment, as Garibaldi seemed to assume he would. He did dread, somewhat, any assignment of public servitude to the Centauri, but he knew to expect imprisonment instead. It was the default mode of the B5 court: imprisonment or exile, and he rested his confidence on Sheridan's promise to guard him from total banishment. So instead he awaited only the length of his imprisonment, thinking of how to arrange his affairs through Na’Toth while he was away.

It was shockingly infantile, to lock someone away for a social misdeed and decree it just; to demand no retribution or reparation or even remorse. What was the educational value in that? What could be gained? They asked only for one’s removal from society, with little regard for the condition in which the criminal might return to it. 

But even worse, sometimes they were not returned at all. It was hard to believe that an intelligent species (among whom the virtue of kindness was not wholly unknown, unlike certain others) would sentence its own to entire lifetimes in lightless, lifeless cells. They were not even inclined to sheer torture as the Centauri were - no, one was provided the barest concessions of life. A bed, a scheduled break, a visit or two from approved guests. Meager freedoms. An effort to prolong the prisoner’s suffering? To turn a quiet reprieve, slowly, into madness? To preserve the conscience of the imprisoner? If they never intended to allow the criminal back into society, why not simply get the matter over with with mercy and execute them at once?

Perhaps the Human mind worked in ways he could not fathom - perhaps quiet rumination on one’s crimes was, for them, an obvious solution to their enactment. Perhaps their race simply existed in such excess that they could afford to let people waste away rather than spend the effort in reforming them. And perhaps he should not be surprised after all - their disregard was reflected in their coldness to those unfortunate placeless, workless in the levels of the station beneath their very feet. 

So he waited. A single judgment passed by a single arbiter, one designated and professional in the matter; not by the accuser, the community, the clans. So strange, that one with no knowledge at all of the persons should be deemed most fit to judge. No procession, no debate. Just a case, sparingly pleaded - or rather, not pleaded at all. He was, as he would always be in matters of justice, entirely honest, and he named himself guilty at Garibaldi’s suggestion. Sheridan attempted an intervention on his part, arguing that his actions could not be attributable to him in good conscience due to the influence of Dust. The judge seemed wholly unconvinced, countering with a well rehearsed rebuttal - but perhaps this was all noble and correct. Perhaps the apparent decorum was meant to be interrupted, and the interruption shut down in turn. G’Kar had no notions of Human propriety, so he answered the questions that were addressed to him, fairly and evenly, and he waited.

Sixty days.

Sixty days?

He turned, instinctively, to Na’Toth, standing at the back of the small crowd of onlookers. She gestured in a way that he was sure even the Humans could understand: _What?!_

G'Kar looked back at the judge and found no trace of humour in her expression, so he stifled his own and nodded, calmly. _Sixty days_ , he thought, staring at the floor. Sixty days in a Human jail, fed and watered and unchained within the confines, for nearly having murdered the Centauri ambassador in a drug-addled haze. He looked up again, struggling to contain himself. He should have done this _years_ ago.

The court adjourned abruptly with the striking of a gavel - evidently, he was not allowed any opportunity to appeal the ruling. But he counted that as a blessing, because he was not sure he could make it through. He held his gaze somberly downward, hoping he was giving the appearance of due seriousness.

It all came apart, however, when Mr. Garibaldi came to stand beside him, with a grim look set on his face. Behind him, Na’Toth was still gesturing her disbelief, and G’Kar’s restraint left him in a peal of laughter.

Startled, Garibaldi scowled, his default reaction to anything unexpected. “Something amusing about this to you?”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “No, nothing at all. I so greatly anticipate the application of due justice.” Sixty _days_.

Na’Toth came to stand beside them, and she gave him a face. “Don’t mind him, Mr. Garibaldi.”

“Right… well,” he picked up the Book of G’Quan from where it had been sitting in a briefcase at the side of the desk. “I’m sorry it had to go this way, even if you aren’t. But I thought you might like to have this while you’re away.”

Still unable to wipe the grin from his face, G’Kar pushed the Book back in his hands, shaking his head. “No, you can keep it for now.”

“I’m… to be honest, G’Kar, I’m having a hard time getting through it. I don’t exactly know what you wanted me to-”

“No matter, Mr. Garibaldi. Simply consider yourself its guardian if you find nothing else of value in its pages. But it does reward those who seek its knowledge.” His expression settled, finally, and he exhaled, reaching out and thumbing briefly over the corner of the Book. “I have studied it for years. Perhaps I will take the time to meditate on other things while I am- I am-” he choked down a giggle. “…away."

Garibaldi frowned, setting the Book back in his bag. “I’m not sure the judge was right, you know. You aren’t in your right mind.”

“I am perfectly well. Will you take me to my prison now?”

“What, are you in a rush? Sure, I’ll escort you down. Na’Toth, we have his effects turned over from Medlab if you want to pick up his things and hang onto them.”

She nodded. “May we have a word in private once he is… confined?”

“You’ll have to go through visitation protocol, I’m afraid. Might be a couple days. If it’s urgent better say it now.”

Her expression soured. “Very well.” She turned to G’Kar. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” she said flatly, in G’Kham-et.

He switched to G’Kham-et in kind, even as Garibaldi headed out of the room to wait with the guards outside, leaving them unobserved. “Haven’t you been complaining about how you need more room to work? Take this as an opportunity.”

“What were you thinking?” She snapped. “Waiting for me to head off station so you could get high and thrown in _prison_?” She spat the English word with contempt.

“I did not want to alarm you, and besides,” he truly could not help but smile again. “After everything that has happened… sixty days! Imagine the fit Mollari will throw when he hears. Anything less than my organs on a platter is an insult, I expect.” He sighed with deep satisfaction.

“You are enjoying this,” she said, accusatory.

“You will too, once you return to our room and realize that you are free of me for once.”

“Maybe so,” she said, her lips twisting into a smile as she thought it over. “But you are still an idiot and you should feel bad.”

“You sound more and more like a Human every day.” Ducking to avoid her swipe at his face, he laughed, “But I will endeavour to meditate on my wrongdoings deeply enough to satisfy everyone.” 

—

The prison cell was large enough for G'Kar to walk in, to pace for a few steps with enough briskness to pretend he was going somewhere. The cot lay by the wall, completely unsuitable for sleeping (too springy, too high from the ground, too soft, too small), and he hauled it instead into the middle of the room to allow himself a terse lap around the perimeter of the room.

He discovered that he was within earshot of other prisoners in the block, but none of them seemed to be willing conversationalists. His guards seemed even less interested in him, maintaining a professionally apathetic disposition. So he was left alone, in a way Narns were very rarely alone. But unlike the Centauri who took full advantage of their weakness and used it as leverage, he suspected that the Humans did not quite know what they were doing to a Narn when they made him live alone, sleep alone, eat alone. He had suffered worse, in worse prisons, by worse captors, but it still ached, to hear his voice bounce back from the walls of his empty cell for lack of an ear to fall upon. He kept talking and kept singing, anyway.

Initially, G’Kar had had the idea to catch up on some reports while he was imprisoned. But it was revealed that B5’s brig employed a strict no-electronics-except-implants-and-even-then-only-deactivated policy, and racking his brain for what to do without his voice-to-text transcripter, he settled on a sheaf of paper and a pen. It felt rather noble and old-fashioned, and he was prone to liking things of that nature, weak to certain notions of simpler times.

But for several days, he was confronted with the sheer blankness of the pages. Once the strange novelty of the Human cell and twice-daily Human meals wore away (along with the mild indigestion they wrought), he mostly fretted and paced and stared at the offendingly empty paper that waited in a neat stack on the cot, which had come to serve as his table.

He had not written in a long time. What he should have been working on was annotating and improving Na’Toth’s bare-boned Ghelet-Akar, the reports he was meant to continually update and send back to the Circle. In his stead, she had been making jotted notes of events, and they had been piling up for several months now, awaiting his commentary for the perusal of a nonexistent Circle, potentially even distribution to nonexistent specialists and nonexistent publics.

But he had not been permitted to take Na’Toth’s documents into his cell, and without them to refer to, he was left leaning on his own memory. And his own memory was clouded and dark and emotional. While his personal interpretation was, of course, valued, the Ghelet-Akar required focus and clarity and his memory was anything but.

On the morning of his eighth day, he was busy pacing and singing loudly to himself, and ignoring the heckling from the rest of the cellblock, waving his pen through the air to unheard symphony. A particularly rousing complaint in Villisi - about his pitch and its ghastly similarity to that of a Centauri river-trawler - from down the hall made him laugh mid-stride. He turned to shout back through the door a spirited “ _Cellinivos aporo vosi!_ ” which elicited a further string of echoed curses from the offended, on the subject of Narn mothers, et cetera.

When he turned back to the paper, he realized that his gesticulation had sent a spatter of ink directly across the top page. Sighing, he sat down in front of the bed and took the sheet aside. He supposed this one may as well be sacrificed to a few preliminary scribbles.

He decided not to give himself too much time to think. He put his pen to the page and wrote the first thing that came to mind - the image of his father, burned now permanently into his mind. Known but unknown, in a tableau of Homeworld too clear to be true. A mask as real as a face, only flawed in its inability to rage as a Narn would rage in the face of pain. 

He stopped when he reached the bottom of his spattered page. This was not what he was meant to be writing. His duty was to record, to give voice to the events of the day, and although this qualified, in some measures, it resembled less Ghelet-Akar and more Ghelet-N’Sekh. 

G’Kar had never aspired to be a leader in his faith, although such responsibility had fallen to him since he first came to Babylon 5, incorporating itself naturally into his duty to the other Narn aboard. Perhaps the vision had been a push to accept that role wholly - to tread his path in new direction. He had been shown, so clearly, the place Narn was expected to take. He had been pushed to lead them there, to bear all the sacrifice of his world and offer it willingly to the others, to be subsumed by greater purpose. There would always be sacrifice. There would always be struggle, followed by unity, followed by struggle. It seemed that the choice offered to him now was to determine where the sacrifice should be spent, where the struggle should be fought and most likely won, for every Narn knew that a struggle could not be stopped only on one side.

Beneath it all, too, beneath his vision of Narn, of being swallowed by purpose and home, beat the rotted Centauri heart of knowledge he had ripped from Mollari. There were secrets in it he did not yet understand, stories he could not read. It was a meat glistening with fat but needing to be cleft and cleaned before it could bear sustenance.

There was so much to consider of his vision. It might take years. It might take the rest of his life, to come to terms with what was shown to him, to discern what was meant to be accepted and what was meant to be fought.

He reached for the rest of the paper and began writing on the pristine second page. There would be no better time to start that contemplation.

—

G’Kar had visitors, kept at an arm’s length away on the other side of a cold steel table in a too-bright room under disinterested observation. He supposed that his crime was not severe enough to earn complete severance of his social ties, and he was glad of these little reprieves of conversation.

Na’Toth visited weekly on official business, but she also used up nearly the entire visiting hour each time. She did not say as much, but he suspected that his absence had not been entirely the boon she anticipated, especially given her lack of talent in cooking. In any case, he enjoyed her company and suffered her misgivings when he described his return to writing. He knew her criticism would only improve the work.

Ta’Lon came by with a younger Narn, a friend from their common rooming house in Brown sector. They came to seek his opinion - and, intentionally or not, to start an argument - on G’Led’s theory of divisibility, which spurred on a debate so vigorous two guards stepped into the room, alarmed that they might be starting a fight. Energized, G’Kar returned immediately to his cell and wrote four pages of hurried notes on divisibility and its applications to military strategy, before sitting back and realizing he had essentially re-written G’Led. He crumpled those pages. An hour later, he flattened them back out, copying a more condensed and annotated version into his chronicle proper.

Captain Sheridan he saw once, briefly - not a scheduled affair in the visitation room, just a quick nod and hello in his cell. G’Kar acknowledged the acknowledgment, and sent the Captain on his frowning, busy way. Even while interned, G’Kar had received snatches of news and rumour about Nightwatch sinking its claws into the throat of Babylon 5. Selfishly, he worried for his own safety, but less selfishly, he worried what would become of the place if they were to win the quiet war for the station.

As the deliverer of most of his gossip, Mr. Garibaldi looked in on him on occasion. Clearly lacking for company himself, he came to air his complaints about Nightwatch (undermining his authority), Mr. Allan (overly indulgent of Nightwatch), the Captain (unhelpful in this regard), and several members of his security staff whose names G’Kar struggled to keep separate (broadly incompetent, if Garibaldi were to be taken directly at his word, but then, he was their employer?). G’Kar held out a little hope, each time, but Garibaldi never mentioned the Book.

G’Kar was still not entirely sure what had compelled him to give it over. Na’Toth had exploded into guffawing laughter when she found out, wondering aloud how G’Kar had been drawn to the man aboard furthest from any enlightenment. He insisted that there was value in its pages even for the most stubborn non-believers (and here, giving her a meaningful look, at which she scoffed with predictable disdain).

There were times he missed the Book dearly, not for its passages, which he knew well enough by heart, but for the easy comfort of flipping through its pages. His copy was well worn and frayed along the edges, having lived a full life since its release into the world. The precise replication of each smudge and tear from the original was not meant, as outsiders often assumed, to be kept pristine. They were markers of historicity, the plainest and most honest way of presenting the single life of a single work, never to be understood except in context. The painstaking effort was made to display the lived, imperfect nature of the text and its creator, and by extension, the lived, imperfect nature of its reader. G’Kar and G’Quan walked two paths in parallel, crossing in the Book. G’Kar’s fingerprints seeped into the pages over G’Quan’s; and over G'Nett's and G'Lon's and other borrowers before him. Every set of hands that passed over its pages left a mark, however faint, but this Book was fresh with G'Kar's, and at times he missed it simply for its weight when held against his chest.

But even without the Book, and even without proper company, there was an easiness to this life that gave him an indulgent pleasure. He was not _working_ , because he was isolated from the whole. He was prevented from acting on his duty, and with a tinge of guilt, he enjoyed this ill-gotten leisure. He was occupied by little things: praying, writing, eating, singing, pacing, stretching. To ease his conscience, he told himself that he was clearing his mind, thinking fully on what must be enacted once he was free to enact it. But he did feel well. Very well, and very alive.

Dr. Khoury came to administer a checkup sometime in the second week. He liked Dr. Khoury, of course, because she was generous and wise and she worked for his people tirelessly, but also because something told G’Kar that she was as capable of dealing a wound as healing one. It was a quality that he appreciated in a doctor. She declared him healthy, laughed at his jokes, and her smile only faltered when he asked after Dr. Franklin. “Busy,” she sighed, "Very busy, these days,” in a way that meant much to her, and little to G’Kar.

Dr. Franklin did not visit, and G’Kar felt his absence more acutely than he knew he should.

They did not owe each other anything, really. So their paths had crossed in ways more significant than chance - well, his paths crossed with many others. It was the way of things, in a place like Babylon 5 where everyone was so knitted together, where the forces of fate and purpose from all corners of the galaxy crashed against one another every day. The doctor was ever bound by duty, like G’Kar was, and the work was what brought them together. Perhaps it would be the only thing that did. That would not be so bad.

But he had caught such a tantalizing glimpse into Franklin’s mind: an intelligent, compassionate place, but one in such pain, twisted in knots of inarticulate rage and desire that drew G’Kar in with deep curiosity. Their minds had folded into each other so easily; the resonance of two frequencies that built and built on the other until the sound peaked, unbearable, shrieking through them both. He almost wished to have kept them there longer, to remember it better. But he did not want to think of Dr. Franklin in that way. He wanted to think of Franklin as one who would battle with pain and come out victor. But what to think of the fact that he held so much of it in himself, crushing it down, burying it away until it was ready to come screaming out? He supposed that he would only find out if the doctor allowed it. 

But he had not even visited. So G’Kar left the event a bare synopsis in his writing, undissected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on narn when you do a crime, the whole town, including you, gets together to argue about how + how long you will labour for the clan of the people you did a crime on, OR, in the event that you are evaluated as being an incorrigible bastard, who will get to shoot you first


	14. BLOOD AND WATER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martial law is declared. Stephen debates the response.

There was always a certain surreality that followed the reception of bad news. There was the shock, the disbelief, the staring around at everyone else receiving the news wondering, is everyone else hearing this? And the slow realization that yes, they were. 

Martial law was declared in Earth Central and the consequences were rolling out toward every Human ship and colony in the galaxy in an inevitable wave. In the stunned silence of MedLab 1, with every eye on the news monitor, Stephen’s imagination ran wild. It spiraled out into visions of civil war, of never seeing Earth again, of a lifetime spent on the run, living outside the fringes of earth space. He didn’t know what to do with the flood of thoughts that rose in his mind, so after a moment, he stuffed them away, blanked them out of his mind, and kept working. And around him, every other Human slowly absorbed the news and did the same.

On Babylon 5, life went on. After the emergency ‘casts, people looked around, and kept going. Ships kept docking. Businesses kept transacting. Doctors kept working. Stephen finished his shift, went to his room, collapsed into his bed, woke four hours later from a fitful sleep, and dragged himself to breakfast.

When he did properly eat breakfast, Stephen ate it in the Earthforce cafeteria. He garnered odd looks the first few times, often being the only person in civvies, but eventually, the spacers began to recognize him, and then they could comfortably ignore him. Breakfast was the busiest time of day in the cafeteria, packed with hollow-eyed spacers and officers cramming down as much as they could manage before day shift began. This day was no exception. Life went on, and while hushed conversation and gossip was murmured all around the room, breakfast had to be eaten, day shifts had to be started.

Eating a squarish meal was less efficient than his nutrient bars, but there was a reassuring normalcy in eating breakfast when everyone else was eating breakfast, especially on a day like this. And today, he wasn’t the only one in the caf out of Earthforce blues. Marcus arrived around fifteen minutes past 07h00, and therefore after Stephen had finished most of his nutrient gruel. With his tray in hand, he spotted Stephen, sitting alone at one of the few small tables that lined the edges of the room around the large, benched communal tables in the centre. He indicated the empty seat questioningly, and Stephen nodded.

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, as though it were.

“Morning,” Stephen answered.

“Fast eater, are you?” Marcus eyed the empty bowl on Stephen’s tray as he set his own on the table. 

Stephen hadn’t really prepared for small talk. Fascists choking the sector, Earth Senate collapsing, war on their doorstep- “I… well, you know how this stuff gets when it’s cold.”

Marcus sat, taking a gulp of coffee to wash down a spoonful of gruel. “Yeah. Know it intimately,” he grinned. After a couple months, Stephen still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the Ranger. Friendly. Weird. Hiding something?

“I heard about that little… stunt with Susan last week,” Stephen said, while they were on the subject of breakfast.

Marcus raised his eyebrows. “Why, that sounds rather accusatory. Can’t a fellow buy someone breakfast in these parts?”

“Didn’t figure Ranger salary would cover much in the way of fresh meat and eggs.”

“Ah, well, it’s not like my expenses are high. Besides, one good turn deserves another, don’t you think?” He eyed Stephen appraisingly, and Stephen eyed him back. Any friend who knew what Susan had been through the last couple years would be protective. Marcus didn’t know. But it wasn’t Stephen’s place to tell him, either.

“Susan has a lot to worry about as it is.”

“Of course. And my only aim is to take some of that worry off her shoulders, ‘cos if you ask me, you can’t have it be doom and gloom all the time. She could use a good distraction or two. And she’s not the only one,” he added with a low laugh, glancing up at Stephen.

Stephen crossed his arms. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in a bit of a crisis.”

“Sure, but you’ve got to live, too, haven’t you?” Marcus smiled, scooping down another few spoonfuls of his breakfast. “Anyway. Last I heard you were trying to get a message through to Earth. Any luck? You know, before…?”

“Last one that got through was more than a week ago. Just a check-in. Nothing since. But I don’t have much priority access.” Every two days his personal terminal automatically repeated an impersonal message out to his parents’ home. It was less an attempt at reconnection and more a dutiful attempt to breach the unofficial communications blockade. His mother knew better than to respond with sensitive details on an open channel these days, so mostly he got back generic platitudes. “Got through to Mars U the day before last, but I didn’t hear back. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kathy - my sister - left the planet already.”

“Damn. What about your father?”

Stephen grimaced. But Marcus couldn’t be blamed for only knowing General Franklin by reputation. “Even if he was taking calls from B5 he wouldn’t take them from me. He didn’t need Clark to give him the excuse, either,” he added. 

“Ah.” Marcus tilted his head. “My mistake.”

“It’s fine. He’s out there patrolling Sol System. Giving everyone the creeps.”

Marcus nodded, pushing a spoonful around in his bowl. “This is the worst bit. Everybody’s got their pieces in place and we’re all just waiting our turn to make a move.”

“We’ve been waiting for so long. We waited when the Centauri invaded Narn. We waited when Clark took power. We-” Stephen caught himself and dropped his voice, a little too late. “We’ve been waiting while Nightwatch creeps in. I’m almost looking forward to the dam breaking. I’m tired of trying to figure out how it’s going to shake out.”

“Hm.” Marcus took a long drink of his coffee, looking at Stephen with interest over the rim of his mug. “Careful what you wish for, hey?”

—

TO: [SECURITY PERSONNEL, BABYLON 5]  
SUBJ: URGENT: NIGHTWATCH NOTICE

Effective immediately, Earth Alliance Offworld Security is solely the responsibility of Nightwatch. This is ordered directly from Earth Alliance Political Office (see attached) concomitant with the declaration of martial law.

The local chapter on Babylon 5 is headed by Warrant Officer Oscar Hardin, from whom you will henceforth receive direct instruction.

Every current member of Babylon 5 Security is expected to attend a mandatory briefing at 15h00, 15h45, 16h30, 17h15, or 18h00 in Security Office B. (See attached schedule for roll call.) Following the briefing, a formal (re-)registration will take place in central dispatch. Any member of Security who fails to attend the alloted briefing AND registration periods without notice will be, without exception, terminated from Babylon 5 Security.

Please refrain from making follow-up inquiries through the Link or BabCom systems. At each mandatory briefing, a Nightwatch Officer or Aide will answer any questions pertaining to this transition. Your cooperation is appreciated.

Do not reply to this message.

—

“ _This_ is the plan?” Stephen paced restlessly on one side of the conference table. “Beat them over the head with legalese until they give up?” His temples ached as he processed the briefing Susan had just given him - incite mutiny among Nightwatch, then spring a net of legal technicality as they attempted to act on ill-gotten authority. Sheridan must feel extraordinarily clever.

Susan sat at the table, leaning her forehead against one hand. She looked about as exasperated as he felt. “It’s not like Sheridan enjoys sitting on his hands. It’s what we’ve got right now. People around here respect the chain of command, so that’s what we’ll use to disarm Nightwatch.”

“For a couple days! Clark will re-issue the order to Nightwatch the minute news gets to him.” He huffed. “The fucking _chain of command_. Of course Sheridan comes up with something like this, fishing around for some letter of the law to get his way.”

“What would you do instead, just jail them all on the spot?”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t be looking for little loopholes to _gotcha_ the fascists trying to take over the station. And in the end, isn’t Sheridan just arresting them under another pretense? This is all just a stall.”

“Yes, and this stall is going to give us a few days to figure out what the hell else we can do about it! I thought you’d at least be happy about having the Narns fill in for the missing security.”

“Why would I be happy about us finding a new way to twist their arm? A new way to use them for our gain and give them nothing in return?”

“It was G’Kar’s idea!”

He swallowed, absorbing the fact. “What’s his angle?”

“God if I know. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth right now. I trust G’Kar. I only trust his guys as far as I can throw ‘em, but that’s still more than we can trust Nightwatch, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Look, Stephen, we don’t have time to argue over whether every plan is morally perfect enough for you. I’m briefing you because you’re senior staff, not because I need you to contest every single decision Earthforce makes here. It’s an Earthforce station. You work for Earthforce. We’re trying to play this all above board as much as possible.”

“Why?” he snapped. “Why bother?”

“Why?” Susan slammed her hand down on the table, fixing Stephen with a wide-eyed indignation. “Because we have to exhaust every recourse before we resort to starting a civil war, goddamnit! Because everybody has family on Earth, and everybody knows people on Clark’s side, or on the fence, and not all of them can just decide to stop giving a damn about those people when it’s inconvenient!”

Stephen came to a dead stop in his pacing, and he felt the blood rushing to his head. “So that’s it? I’ve been going insane for the last two years begging you people to stop dragging your feet and it’s because I just don’t give a damn?”

“‘ _You people_ ’?” Susan stood up forcefully, kicking her chair back out of her way as she circled around to him. “Listen to yourself! You might not be Earthforce, but last I checked, you were still Human. I know you hate being on anybody’s side except your own, but you should give it a try sometime.”

“Just because I can’t stomach taking orders that I know are wrong doesn’t mean I can’t pick a side!”

“Then whose side are you on? Right now, there are two, and I know you sure as hell aren’t on Clark’s!” She jabbed a finger against his chest.

“So it’s the lesser of two evils? That’s the pitch now?”

“No, damnit, it’s evil or us! If you can’t tell the difference then I don’t know where you went wrong.” She looked at him searchingly. “Sheridan is going to make a bigger move soon. He has to. It’s all coming to a head. Hell, maybe you’ll get the war you’re after.”

“I don’t _want_ war. But if it’s between that and another year of placating the people who are trying to turn us into Centauri Secundus, I’ll take the war.”

Susan took a deep, clearly resigned breath, the creases around her mouth smoothing out. “You and Sheridan may well be on the same page, then. And we want you in on this. I’ve seen you get your hands dirty when there’s no glory and no payout and no damn moral absolutism. This stuff gets messy. It gets ugly. I know you know that.”

Stephen frowned, his arms crossed defensively. “I’ve never not done my job. And I won’t start now. But if you want to see me cheerleading you’ll have to give me a reason.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Fine. Just make sure you have a trauma team on site when we spring the trap. Hopefully the worst they’ll do is shoot themselves in the foot, literally. But be prepared for a firefight just in case.”

“Of course. Human paramedics will be there. Maybe a couple Narns for good measure. Am I dismissed, Commander?”

Susan’s jaw clenched. She turned away, which he took as permission. Gratefully, he made to leave the stifling conference room. A headache was blooming into a ball of needling spines, scraping at his skull from the inside. _Focus. Focus._ He needed to get back to work.

“Wait. There’s… one other thing.”

He stopped short of the door, his hand reaching for the panel to unlock it. He turned around with a sigh. “What is it?”

She straightened her uniform and her posture, which was almost always a sign of bad news. “Look, we just heard a few minutes before you got here. It still has to be verified, so don’t pass it around, but the _Alexander_ just fled a firefight at Io. The _Schwarzkopf_ and the _Excalibur_ were on the other side.”

Stephen stood still, his arms hanging heavy at his sides. “Was the _Schwarzkopf_ hit?”

“Yeah. That’s how the _Alexander_ made it out of the system. But they didn’t go down, at least not that we know. They took out two other ships on Hague’s side. We’ll confirm as soon as we can.”

He nodded, looking down for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Stephen. We’ve already had casualties on both sides, and this thing is only going to get uglier.” She stepped closer. “For what it’s worth, you know, the General is just-”

“Just obeying orders? Honestly?” He met her gaze, and the sympathy dissolved out of her expression once she saw his. “ _General_ _Franklin_ doesn’t need you to vouch for him. He’s made the choice to stay on the side of xenophobes and fascists who are out for blood. He can face the consequences.”

The look she gave him was one of dismay, perhaps of understanding. He knew what she wanted to say. _He’s your father_. Yes. But nobody chooses their father, do they? “Glad you’re not going to lose any sleep over it,” she said tersely. 

Stephen knew she must be thinking of her own family. That was fine. But she didn’t understand why he couldn’t think of his the same way.

“Well, like you say. It’s evil or us.”

—

TO: CELIA FRANKLIN // EARTH-NORTHAM // CHICAGO // 60647-LS-1082-A  
SUBJ: [ ]

How do you stand it, knowing what he’s like and what he’s doing out there? How many people will he have to kill before you can stop looking him in the eyes? There were 238 crew on the _Aeolus_. 190 on the _Telesto_. There are over 150,000 people on Babylon 5. And if he got the order, he’d take us down, too. All we can do is wait until it happens.

I know, I only ever get in touch when something bad is happening. You and mom probably won’t get this, anyway. Still figure that makes my track record better than his. But who’s counting?

S

—

Stephen had turned around in the Green 4 hallway twice already, backtracking and re-advancing and backtracking again. The fresh stim was buzzing down his spine and making him jittery - taken too soon after the preceding one, he knew, but he needed it to clear the headache. He turned around one last time, about to leave for good, and when he turned, a voice called out from down the hall. “Dr. Franklin?”

“Oh. Na’Toth. Yeah.”

She approached, standing slightly too close, as usual for a Narn, and then backing off a pace, as usual for a Narn used to dealing with aliens. “Are you here to see G’Kar? He’s not here.” 

Stephen let out a shallow breath. “Where is he?”

Na’Toth looked around conspicuously in the not-quite-empty hallway. “He is… busy. Busy, organizing… things…”

“I know about the… plan.”

“Ah. Of course. Good,” she said, although her dry tone suggested that she thought otherwise.

He scratched the back of his head. “Um. Could we talk, actually?”

She looked at him skeptically. “If you like.” She gestured farther down the hall toward her and G’Kar’s room.

The room felt familiar, though it had been more than a year since he’d entered. It was warm, dry, and the waft of burning incense brought with it such clear memory that he hesitated on the threshold, hit squarely in the chest. Na’Toth did not sit, instead assuming a guard-like position beside G’Kar’s desk where Stephen had seen her stand before. 

He entered slowly. “Look, I was- well, aside from everything else, I realize… I haven’t seen G’Kar since before he was imprisoned and I… just wondered how he’s doing.”

“Ah. Rather poor timing, for that.” Said without reprimand, per se, which stung a little. As though she had never expected better of him. Without surprise, too, which stung more. 

“Yeah. I suppose so.” Na’Toth did not continue and answer the question, and Stephen couldn’t bring himself to ask again. “Well, what I really came to discuss was this plan to take over part of security. I just… wanted to hear it from him, because it gives me a bad feeling.”

“Indeed,” she grunted. 

“You don’t like it either?” That relaxed him out of his apprehension, and he moved to lean against the back of the armchair nearby.

“It is an absolute waste of resources. We are at war. And G’Kar and Ta’Lon are busy playing lapdog to Humans.”

“I don’t think it’s like that,” he same lamely. “I mean, I was hoping to come here and find out this was some ploy to edge his way into a bargaining position with Sheridan and Delenn. Not that I think Sheridan has bad intentions-” This was met with the Narn equivalent of an eye-roll, a distinct shrug and flicking-outward of the hands. “-but Narn is never going to be his first priority. And G’Kar must know that, but this whole plan, putting Narns under Earthforce command…”

“You don’t trust your own military.” She tapped a claw thoughtfully against her chin.

“That’s not it, exactly. Earthforce isn’t just one thing. I was enlisted during the Minbari war - willingly,” he added, though he wasn’t sure that meant anything to a Narn. “Even now, I think Sheridan is moving in the right direction. But too slowly. And in too many steps.”

“Then you see my issue in reflection. Our Homeworld bleeds. And G’Kar has decided that instead of stopping our wounds, he will stop another’s. We learned this once. Nobody will fight for us. Nobody will heal us. We picked ourselves out of the dirt and rose to the stars, on our own strength! But now G’Kar lends us to Sheridan and Delenn, even while they bar him from their war room. He says the war with the Shadows must be won first.” She bared her teeth and shook her head. “By that time, what will be left of Narn? We will all have been feed to the flames to keep the rest of the galaxy warm.”

“And how do you see it? You have the fight the Centauri first?”

She held her gloved hands out in front of her. “We have in front of us a smaller conflict, that we have won before, and a huge conflict, which we cannot fight until we have recouped ourselves. The more we spend on the larger, the less we have for the smaller, until we are so diminished we can win neither.” She closed one hand into a tight fist, and let the other fall to her side. “That is what the Centauri would love best of all.”

Stephen frowned. “Part of me thinks that’s what’s happening with Earth Alliance. And B5 is right in the middle of it, split up between fighting what might be a civil war on one hand, and being the only ones noticing the damn Shadows and Centauri trying to choke out life in the rest of the galaxy.”

Na’Toth grunted what might have been sympathy.

“I’m surprised Ta’Lon agrees with G’Kar. I got the impression that he’s, ah, a nationalist, I suppose?” 

Frankly, Ta’Lon was inscrutable. Despite apparently understanding English, he made his way around the station in sign-assisted G’Kham-et, even to those he knew for a fact could not understand it. What Stephen had gathered from the Narn employees at the clinic was that he was stoic, formal, but very willing to make himself useful. He could be seen carrying deliveries through the Narn quarter to the boarding houses, and Stephen most often saw him escorting Narn elders and children to and from the clinics.

“All Ta’Lon really wants is to be led to a sword he finds noble enough to die upon. He swore himself as G’Kar’s arm. Like some Hg’kh’rettan Era soldier boy,” she said, with clear enough disdain that Stephen understood it as a deep cultural insult. “G’Kar leads with promises of glory, of a great war that encompasses all wars. Fighting the Shadows like our ancestors did,” she said dryly. “And he does not even have to make it convincing, because he lives in such absurd isolation!”

Na’Toth paused for reaction, but Stephen stood in uncertain silence. She sighed theatrically, and Stephen thought maybe she had picked up more from G’Kar than she would be willing to admit. “You don’t understand.” It was not an accusation.

“Probably not in the right context, no.”

“He was Kha’Ri’Akar. He was one of the whole. To you, he was the voice. But he could not be mistaken as the body. He could never move and act except to communicate. You understand?” Stephen nodded tentatively. “But there is no Kha’Ri now. So what is a Kha’Ri’Akar to do?” She gave a thin smile. “Why, perhaps he will take it upon himself to create a new body for himself. One that walks and talks and decides all things alone.”

Stephen scratched his head. “It seemed to me that he became leader around here through his authority. Political, or religious, or just being the one who showed up. Nobody else seemed to, as much as he did.” Nobody else came to pray over the dying and dead. Nobody else faced the Council with as much restraint as a Narn could muster. Nobody else spoke for his people with the humour, dignity, and wisdom that G’Kar did. Despite what Na’Toth said, it was hard not to think of G’Kar as Narn incarnate.

She clicked her teeth. “That is how it began. He earned respect as Kha’Ri’Akar, as N’Sekh. That is natural. But now he is enthused with his ideas, carrying himself away, and now, he is a voice disembodied, who finds he likes being listened to. And Ta’Lon is helping,” she added in a low hiss, “Because Ta’Lon thinks that it is like the old ways, and that the old ways are good.”

“He wants G’Kar to be more like a traditional clan leader, then.”

“Not traditional. Archaic. Inflexible. Based only on family, as though blood decides who you are, what you contribute, where you find your place. We grew out of these petty notions.” _How sensible_ , Stephen thought.

Na’Toth began to pace, now, to better gesture her thoughts. “Those systems made us easy to conquer: sever the head and the whole animal falls. We made something better. Fluid. Challenging itself. Evolving. We resisted by making it so that a single Narn could not be felled to any effect. A hundred others would absorb the work, the responsibility. We adapted. But Ta’Lon! Ta’Lon would have G’Kar become a clan head and adopt every wayward fool on the station,” she sneered. “Praying and singing and following him around like mindless little… you have th’t’kret on your world?” She gestured a small blobby shape, then walked her fingers through the air.

“Um, something like ducklings maybe?”

“Ducklings,” Na’Toth repeated.

“So you think he needs to be… tempered? Disagreed with? I figured that was your job.”

She scoffed. “I could not bear that burden, although I try. We are not of a kind. He is alone. He is apart. And because of that, he cannot lead.”

Stephen mulled it over. “It’s odd that this sort of stratification would take hold. I thought Narns had more of a tendency toward collectivism.”

She looked at him as though she might be talking to a very simple dog. “Would you say that Humans tend toward self-isolation? Small families? Large? Urban or rural?”

“Well… it depends a lot on the culture, the economic str-”

“So it is with Narn. We made ourselves one way, before. We made ourselves another way, after the Centauri. It took effort. It takes effort. And a disruption of that effort leads to…” she gestured disdainfully toward the door. “G’Kar is a good leader. People like him. People want to follow him. Even me. And he is even correct, from time to time. But not all the time. Who will stop him when he is not?”

“That’s the question we ask of every leader. It should never be a rule of one. We’ve learned that the hard way, just like you have.”

“Yet your government tears itself apart when one man is replaced with another.” It was hard to tell when Na’Toth was being confrontational, per se, because she was always confrontational. But she seemed to be asking a question, her sharp red eyes narrowed with more curiosity than animosity.

He sank his weight against the back of the chair that held him up. “It wasn’t just Clark replacing Santiago. A lot of the cabinet was aboard Earthforce One when it was sabotaged, and Clark’s people make up a lot of the replacement.”

“Then he appoints his cadre rulers and none stand to oppose?”

“It’s not-” he sighed. “It’s complicated. It’s not just Clark, and it’s not just his guys. It’s structural, and societal, and I don’t know how it got so bad so fast, but it wasn’t good for a long time, either. They’re not some rogue faction. Hell, they might even be the majority, though I really hate to think so. It’s just easier for the people who disagree to believe it’s just Clark and everyone else is being strong-armed into compliance.”

Na’Toth nodded, tapping her chin as she thought. “But he requires support to have reached this point.”

“Exactly. There’s a lot of xenophobia back home, a lot of people angry that we’re talking to any alien at all, let alone the Minbari. People don’t believe they just backed off and surrendered. They think they’re building up to attack again, wipe us all out in one clean sweep this time. And any other alien might be just as bad. Earth is full of that kind of sentiment lately, and I think Clark is just a symptom.”

“So how can you correct this disease?” 

Stephen stared at her for a moment, then laughed despairingly. “God, I don’t know! I’ve been asking myself that every damn day. It’s not enough to get rid of Clark and his appointees. We can fight them. They’ve sure as hell given us enough reason to, and thank god it seems like we finally will. But I don’t know what we’re going to do if we win. It can’t just go back to business as usual. We can’t just slot in a better candidate and call the job done.”

“Then you understand my position as well.”

“I… in a way, sure. Your disagreement with Ta’Lon is structural. But at the heart of it, G’Kar’s no tyrant.”

“That is beside the point. It is not our way, not after the Centauri.” She sighed, running her fingers along the edge of G’Kar’s desk. “Did you know he was not meant to come here alone, as Ambassador?”

Stephen frowned. “He didn’t. He had Ko’Dath before, and you now.”

She shook her head. “If the Kha’Ri had had their way, there would have been four, all of equal responsibility. That is the minimum for any committee on our world. But Earth Alliance was quite clear: one Ambassador, one aide. Not even two, of equal share. Why would anyone need more than a single voice, after all?”

“I’m sure exceptions could have been made, if the Kha’Ri had better explained-”

“Explained what? How can an alien understand?” Her voice grew bitter, and she curled her claws threateningly. “We respect struggle. But you see it as weakness. The Centauri call us primitive, _squabbling_ over every little decision. And Mollari does not even care for the work. He is only here to drink and feel sorry for himself. The Minbari-” she scoffed. “Delenn represents only a third of their species. They posture at equality but do not let the other two speak. And you. Humans do not even send proper diplomats. Only soldiers. Soldiers and their hierarchies where one always stands on the neck of another.”

Stephen averted his eyes, rubbing his hand over his mouth. Na’Toth let some of the tension out of her stance. “And they leave men like you without recourse,” she said, with as much pity as disdain for his glumness.

“Not all recourse is political.”

“No. But you do not even have that option, do you? You must simply wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the four ambassadors thing: I think a committee of three is default in our minds, i.e. you always have a tie breaker so you never get 'stuck'. but the narns like na'toth, as I imagine them (radical dialecticians), would value the possibility of the 'tie', requiring a struggle of ideology or strategy or whatever, until one side wins out over the other and the contradiction(s) are resolved.
> 
> but also. can you imagine four g'kars. my god, lmao


	15. BETRAYAL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'Kar has a meeting with Delenn.

While G’Kar had been imprisoned, he had been offered a cell within a cell, a strange reprieve of artificial isolation within isolation. Now, released into to the larger body, he was immersing himself back into its lifeflow. At first he had been eager to apply his weeks of rumination to his work; his real work, the work of dialoguing, organizing, curling fingers into fists. Out here, there was life, and where there was life, there was purpose.

But while Babylon 5 bustled with traffic compared to the stillness of his sparse prison cell, he came to find that, if anything, he was more than ever confronted with the strict confines of its hull, its hallways, its impersonal rooms and offices.

The Human civil dispute was advancing. This much was evident through the sheer volume of station gossip that circulated in the recycled air of the station, supplied by a steady drip-feed of rumour and secondhand news, for the ‘real’ Human news could no longer be relied upon. Even the Narns were talking about it, reporting back to Ta’Lon, who reported back to G’Kar what they gained from their Human counterparts in B5 Security. It hardly constituted intelligence, in the official sense, and G’Kar had never much patience for playing the slow hand of deception. But like stale water in a closed greenhouse, the information crept insidiously into most every crevice, eventually; and G’Kar knew that some was always better than none.

Still, his impatience grew. He was observing a terrarium from the inside, while the world moved about them. Babylon 5 declared independence, changed its uniforms from the vestiges of their old allegiance - well and good, indeed, for the safety of the Narns on the station, for the answering of moral duty, for the general improvement of aesthetic, et cetera. But the immense forces of the galaxy did not stall at lines drawn in the sand between the petty races, and the Humans missed the forest for the trees.

Commander Ivanova had turned him away, again, with nothing to offer but platitude. It was not so much, what he asked for. To battle against the enemy that he had been the first to name, when he returned from Z'ha’dum nearly two years before. To be allowed his due place on a war council that fought for the same aims as he had fought for his entire life. 

Na’Toth despised that he asked, and even more that he waited. G’Kar despised it more than she could ever fathom, but he swallowed his pride, as ever. It did not lessen. It did not become easier. It simply became habit.

—

Every non-Human who lived on Babylon 5 lived in a peculiar place, half in and half out of a world at all times. The more effort put into transforming a space designed by Humans, for Humans, on a Human station, the more obvious the contradiction became. G’Kar’s quarters were furnished largely in imitation of offices in G’Khamazad’s newer _shon’noth_ , more a declaration of his species to outsiders than any comfort to himself. He had decorated with new things from Homeworld, things specifically brought to remind him of Narn; things that did not really belong to him, never really felt his, because he did not own much. He brought his clothes, and his knife, and his books. Everything else was there to construct a convincing facade, and it seemed to work.

Still, it was as permanent as any place he had known on Narn, as much _his_ as any of the rooms, shelters, or offices he had been assigned. It had become an uneasy home, with high ceilings and cold floors. It was familiar. He had learned its shape and its sound. He had bounced his thoughts off its walls. He even learned to like sleeping on the bed. He found that he could turn up the heat, light his candles, and retreat into the strange inbetween space that he had molded, buried deep in the halls of an alien fortress.

Delenn’s room was different. It was not so renovated, not so ostentatiously remade from its Human shell. But it was undeniably hers, beyond the superficial touches of decoration that were clearly Minbari. She walked through it knowing that she commanded the space, that things would be as she wrought.

Now, it was a meeting place. G’Kar was summoned, and he entered and waited for greeting. He was unafraid, but the air was tense with anticipation. For what, he did not know. He should feel ready. He should feel eager to accept his place at their table - that must be the reason for this meeting, of course. But in Delenn’s space, he could never be entirely at ease. Minbari never lie. But they rarely tell the whole truth, either.

He sat. He waited. And with certainty, with quiet righteousness in the space that belonged only to her, Delenn told him how he had been forsaken.

While he had warned the others; while he had prayed and begged and fought, she had said nothing. She had waited. They had all waited - for Narn to fall, for the Shadows to move on, for the air to clear before their own action could be made. To put meager words to the enormity of the betrayal was like farce. 

“We knew that the Shadows had returned. We knew they were rebuilding their forces, preparing to strike. We knew that they were seeking allies and that the Centauri were the first to enlist. When you came back from the area near Z'ha'dum and warned us about the enemy's return, we could have spoken out. We could have confirmed your story.” She folded her hands together in her lap, tense and closed off. “We chose to remain silent.”

There was only one question - everything else was as he already knew. “Who is ‘we’?”

“The Grey Council. I was still a part of them at that time. Once the decision was made, I could not disobey it.”

“So you stayed silent. And with the help of the Shadows, the Centauri destroyed my world - enslaved or killed millions of my people.” Fact made for an empty plea to conscience, of course, especially one bound to order as Delenn was. What was a Minbari, if not cold? What were the Grey, if not the arbiters of the galaxy, descending in an instant upon those they deemed terminable?

“If we had spoken out - if we had gone public with what we knew, most of the other worlds would never have believed us. It would have changed nothing! Your world would still have fallen - with one critical difference. There are billions of Narns still surviving on your world. If we had exposed the Shadows, they would have struck openly before we had time to prepare and none of your people would have survived.”

“It was the Centauri that bombarded my planet, not the Shadows! You need not have played your hand to intervene - to do anything while they killed us with weapons illegal by your own definition,” he cried, as though something as petty as law could move her. “You watched. You, the Humans, the Vorlons, the League, you outnumbered them tens to one and you did nothing! The Minbari alone could have brought the Centauri to their knees. We lost it all again and you- you _watched_!”

He stood and turned away, grinding his teeth until his jaw ached. There would be no justice for the dead. There would never be apology enough, nor recompense, not with allies like these. Blood could not be traded for blood, but neither could it be traded for seeds or water or the return of a planet - nothing good, no new life, would ever fill the void of a billion dead, even if the Centauri left Narn today, forever. The weight would always be here, like this, a stone around his neck and the necks of every Narn still breathing-

“G'Kar. Under the Centauri, there is at least the hope of survival. With the Shadows, there is no hope at all. We had to choose between the death of millions and the death of billions; of whole planets!”

He turned sharply on his heel. “The choice was _ours_ to make! But you did not deem us worthy of the making.”

She shook her head. “Your people might have chosen unwisely. The consequences would have reached across the galaxy, not just Narn sector. We could not risk it. No one would have made that sacrifice willingly-”

“So the Grey Council forced it upon us, willing or not, in its infinite wisdom,” he hissed, “Yet you could not even gather the wisdom to stay united.” Her expression clouded.

He came to stand towering above her. She did not flinch, but neither did she stand to meet him. “You do not understand sacrifice as we do. No species in the galaxy has given as much to win as much as we have. We are the only ones who threw off the Centauri by force, we clawed our way here, to a seat at your table-” it was so lifeless, so empty on his tongue- “And it was all by our sacrifice! We know the toll of victory. We have chosen to pay it over and over. So do not tell me we were too petty, too little to accept the fate you decided we deserved regardless.” 

“You did not deserve it. Not a single one of your people deserved to die. Yet war does not deign to give people as they deserve. You know this, G’Kar.”

He knew the past could not be fought. It was as it would ever be, the weight dragging at his heart, growing heavier every day, the truth clinging as dried blood and dirt and shrapnel. “I had already discovered much of what you just told me about the Centauri. But that you knew, and said nothing-” Surely the Human part of her was what shone her eyes wet with tears, creased her brow with anguish.

“Had I learned this as my world was being bombed by the Centauri… I would have killed you. Not only for my own fury, but for that of all my people left to die. You understand that, do you not?”

“Yes. I do.” 

Delenn bowed her gaze. Of course, there was nothing else to say. G’Kar stood there for a moment. His claws did not ache for blood, not now, not anymore. He was tired of pain, of bearing it as much as causing it, its only solace found in its familiarity. But even that seemed hollow.

Stiffly, he sat down across from Delenn. “I may be the emblem of my whole people. Seeing the toll that must be paid, it falls to us to pay it. And the clarity of my sight is the greatest burden I have ever known.” He exhaled slowly. _Your sight is salvation. But not your own._ “You are right. Perhaps nothing would have been changed, except that my people would now be a dead race, with the platitude of recognition our only prize.”

Her eyes held his. “You have come a long way, G’Kar. Further than I could have guessed.”

“No.” For all that he resented her coldness, she might be right about the rest. Here, she was surely wrong. “I stand exactly where I have always stood.”

The smile she gave him was pained with understanding. “The greatest journeys have an odd way of leading us back to our beginnings.” She sat forward, as though she meant to reach across the space between them, but she stopped short. “Sheridan’s promise binds me as well as it does him. We will take you into the council.”

He nodded. There was little honour, and even less gratification in his placement. But it was his. “I will serve.” He stood, bowing the _sk’lekh_ with fists closed tight.

“Someday, when all this is over, perhaps you will find it in your heart to forgive me.”

He smiled bitterly. “No sooner than you find it in yours to make true amends to my people, Delenn. We cannot build our cities with tears, clean our water with apologies. Do not forget us.”

“Never,” she said solemnly, and that was as good as promise.

—

TO: CAPTAIN JOHN J. SHERIDAN // BABYLON 5 // CC-01  
SUBJ: TRUTH

It is done. G’Kar will meet us in the chamber this evening for usual assembly. As to your question, I do not know. It is for him to decide. His history may constrain the horizon of choice. But I will not, anymore.

Delenn

—

When he returned from the new war room the Humans had established, Na’Toth was waiting, fixing him an expectant look over her terminal in the corner of their quarters. Silently, without answering her gaze, he removed his coat, hanging it in its usual place by the door. He set his datapad down on his desk and made for the bedroom, but Na’Toth stood and interrupted his path. “Well?”

“Well, I am inducted into their council,” he sighed. “I take my place with honour, et cetera.”

“What else? What is their plan?”

“They plan to strike.”

“How? What forces? What have you learned?”

“The Minbari are building a fleet, of course. But their real answer was in the Book all along.” His lips curled into a smile. It was not amusing, per se. It was… fitting. “They will use telepaths to fight the Shadows, as our mindwalkers did in G’Quan’s age. They believe the Shadows will be made vulnerable.”

She absorbed the information, frowning. “What of the telepaths? Are they vulnerable in turn? Ours were all destroyed.”

“We cannot know.”

“Then it is a damned good thing there are no mindwalkers left,” Na’Toth scoffed, standing in front of the entrance to the bedroom where G’Kar desperately wanted to lay down and rest. “Or their army would demand their enlistment too, until they all died again, winning their war for them.”

“But there are none, so they cannot demand such a thing. We will not be on the vanguard of this war. Are you not glad?”

“I am simply asking you to remember that they would bleed us dry, if we had any blood left to give.”

“And with that in mind, how differently can I act? We are allies, however fraught. We are fighting a common war, however broad. I will not fail them.”

“And if they fail you? How will you-”

“Na’Toth!” he snapped. “I do not have the time for you to question my every act. You have known my intent to join the council, to fight until the war with the Shadows is won. I have done so, and will do so. That is final.” He shouldered brusquely past her into the bedroom, sinking heavily into the bed as he sat.

She looked at him wide-eyed, stunned briefly into silence. “What Kha’Ri’Akar are you? To deny me the struggle of thought?”

“As you so like to remind me, I am not Kha’Ri’Akar anymore. As for us,” he said coldly, reaching for the matches in his bedside table. “Perhaps our struggle has run its course. If you see no merit in my efforts, find another to support.” He began to light the candles by his side.

She stood there, her hands open and unguarded at her sides, her expression knitted into bewildered anger. He did his best not to see it. He could not help from feeling it, however. After lighting the candles, he put his hands in his lap and closed his eyes, retreating, making clear that hers was the next move.

Finally, she sat beside him, sinking the too-soft, linen-covered mattress that he had come to find a strange, alien comfort. When he looked, he saw that the fire was cooling behind her eyes. She took his hand in hers, clasping it firmly. “What have they done to take the spirit from you?”

He laughed, an empty sound. He squeezed his grip tight around hers. Quick and uncalloused - not a soldier’s hands, hers, despite what she thought. Not for all the strength of her conviction. Not yet. “I thank the Universe that you are too young to understand me, Na’Toth.”

She huffed. “Do you think yourself so beyond understanding? You are always saying things like this, as though you speak from another era. What difference does it make?”

It was all the difference in the world. It was the pain and the glory. Weeks where decades happened, after decades where nothing happened, and his heart beating hard and fast in the centre of it all. Then it was the terror, the descent faster than any could bear to comprehend. It was the revelation; the invincibility and inevitability of their great advance nothing more than threadbare fantasy. And all along, it was his witnessing, his relentless understanding, guarding his terrible truths.

If he told Na’Toth what he had learned of Delenn, he would not be able to keep her from attempting murder. If he told her that he was afraid of exactly what she argued, that he was wretched with fear that their people would be abandoned as soon as their usefulness had run its course, she would demand him to withdraw from his duty to the new council. If he told her that he was hopeful that their combined strength could overcome their common enemy, she would call him a fool, tell him to look around, to see the empty promises of his new allies. And she would be right, and he would be right, and they would argue in circles again and again, and once, it had been invigorating to spar and hone his reasoning against hers. It seemed so long ago.

She held his chin up, looking in his eyes. “Where is that insufferable optimism, G’Kar? Where is the sureness of your footing?” She seemed to say, _tell me. Tell me you are right, so that I can tell you you are wrong, as it should be._ But he was too tired. Too tired to better himself, too tired to hearten her with lively challenge. 

He smiled weakly. “Perhaps you have finally beaten some sense into me. Perhaps I see it as you do, in infinite hopelessness.” 

She knew he was giving up too easily, and she let him, despite the disappointment hanging in the air between them. Perhaps it was pity. He could accept it. He had accepted worse, from people he loved less. He leaned his head against hers, and she assented, and they sat together in silence, the both of them imagining arguments they would not have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying not to do many direct copy-rewrites of existing scenes but this one always bothered me juuuust enough that I didn't want to totally overhaul it. I really like Delenn as a character tbh, I hope that comes across in my characterization? she's uhhhh... complicated


End file.
